


Desperation

by RoryEgg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adultery, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Harmony - Freeform, Pregnancy, Romance, Slow Burn, marriage law
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-09-26 10:10:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17139833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoryEgg/pseuds/RoryEgg
Summary: Harry's a good friend. But when he tells his best friend that he'd do anything for her, he doesn't expect to be offering to father a child with her to save her from the impending Marriage Law.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's officially Christmas hey hey

Hermione impatiently drummed her nails on her briefcase in the foyer outside the Minister’s office. Two intimidating aurors stood on either side of the large wooden door as ministry officials whizzed past her. 

For the past two years, her eagerness to prove herself to those around her hadn't quite worked in her favour. She was constantly being pushed to the side so that those around her - pureboods - could move up in the ranks. Despite the war’s conclusion that blood purity meant nothing and that people are people, Hermione still faced regular insult in the form of shoulder shoves, lewd remarks and invitations to big parties to play the role of token muggleborn or worse, as a publicity stunt.

As it stood, her largest accomplishment thus far had been a promotion to a senior member of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. She knew when she accepted the position that she would have major climbing to do to win the trust and approval of her fellow associates, and it helped that she was considered to be the brightest witch of her age, but the world couldn’t change in a day. Apparently it couldn’t even change in a year. 

Kingsley told all of them after the war that it might even take a lifetime for change to fully take root, and most people wouldn’t like it when it happened to them. But it was the cost of change, and Hermione supported the change he opted for; blood mania would no longer exist, and the promise that none of their future children and grandchildren would ever have to fight how they fought.

Hermione looked back up to the clock, annoyed with herself for her temper starting to flare up as she tried to reign in the harsh comments she just barely kept quiet. 

“I’m sorry,” she started, getting the attention of the young wizard sitting behind a large desk strewn with papers and schedules. “I’ve got an important meeting with the Minister that ought to have started well over fifteen minutes ago. I’m a busy woman, I’ve got other meetings to attend to.”

The young wizard jumped from his chair and stuttered an apology.

“I-I’m sorry Miss Granger, Ma’am, I’m sure the Minister will be with you shortly.”

“I should hope so,” Hermione said as she rolled her eyes. She did not like to be called Ma’am. She wasn’t nearly old enough for such a title at 24. Biting her lip, Hermione wondered if she were being too hard on the boy. It wasn’t his fault that she was in such a bad mood this morning. Perhaps if Ron hadn’t been picking fights all week she would be better at handling something as trivial as a late meeting and not be giving death glares to a young man who had no control over the Minister’s meetings. 

Finally the door swung open and silencing charms were taken down and Hermione could hear the raucous laughter of a large group of men as they left Kingsley’s office. 

Without a word, he gestured to Hermione. 

“I hope that joke was well worth it, Minister,” she grumbled when she sat down across from him, who rose an eyebrow at her sour attitude and gave her a tight lipped smile. 

“So, Hermione. What is on the docket today? Bring me up to speed.”

“Well,” she began, taking a breath. “The house elves are still not wanting to meet with me. I’ve dispatched some of my people to see if we can come to an accord with them, but I’m afraid my reputation precedes me. It seems that their case will have to be handed over to Dammerford despite all my efforts to work with them in the past. The centaur herd out by Hogwarts has been in touch and we have some new legislation that we have to get their approval on. I’ve corresponded with their representatives and we are looking to build centaur-safe villages where they are welcome and commonplace, just as we did with the werewolf communities.”

“Aren’t you afraid that a village like that will breed division between wizarding society and the centaurs? We saw what happened with Villa Luna. It’s entirely inhabited by the werewolves - as much as integration sounds good on paper, most of the wizarding families chose to leave the town completely. Now Villa Luna is in need of help from the ministry because they don’t have a fully sustainable community inside the town borders and vendors aren’t feeling especially motivated to stroll into the heart of a werewolf community. Especially when considering what Fenrir Greyback was like… he traumatized too many people.”

Hermione nodded, anticipating this. 

“Yes, and I need to discuss something with you shortly about werewolves in a moment. But my centaur liaison, Dennis Creevey, has assured me that the centaurs aren’t seeking a village like the werewolves. They are perfectly happy living in the forest. They just want access to villages that won’t try to get rid of them if they happened across the street. Think about their children and how excited they would be to stroll down Diagon Alley like we got to do.”

“I see where you’re coming from, Hermione, but what you’re suggesting would mean pinpointing communities near the herds and buying out any muggle families and then on top of that, buying out wizarding folk who would prefer not to live in such close proximity with the creatures.”

“I think you’ll find that you can share a street with someone you don’t care for and still manage to lead a perfectly satisfactory life, Kings. It isn’t a matter of Creature versus Wizard. It’s a question of soul versus soul, and after the war, nobody could rightly claim that they are better than any other just because of blood or something as trivial as what you’re suggesting.”

“The optics of it are on the right path and I am sure I could find seats on the Wizengamot to back your claim, but the fact of the matter is that it’s all fine and good when it’s happening to someone else. Do you seriously believe that a family like the Pucey’s wouldn’t fight to align themselves with forward-moving politics, vote for your proposal just to look good for the press, and then push the resulting community into near desolate locations? Villa Luna was a lovely idea, Hermione. But it’s better thought up and dreamt of than it actual practice.”

Noticing the deflated look on her face, he put his arms onto the table and leaned over his desk to look her in the eyes. 

“Look, draft some plans and have my assistant book a meeting with you, Dennis and myself. We’ll talk more about that in a week after I get a chance to do some of my own research on the matter.”

Perking up, Hermione smiled and remembered something she needed to get off her chest. 

“Thank you, sir. Now about the werewolves… Kingsley, it is no surprise that we lost a lot of people during the war. I totally understand the need for a complete account of all wizarding families in Britain, but in the recent census done, the Ministry asked for strange information. Werewolves and Veela want to know why they’ve been excluded from this census. Why discriminate against people who are active members of society just because they aren’t entirely like the rest of us?”

Kingsley shifted in his seat, uncomfortable. 

“I’m sorry. All I can tell you is that the werewolf and veela populations weren’t left out for any discriminatory reasons - they just didn’t fit what the census was aimed to collect. I know you have the best intentions and that this is your job, but the census is strictly private. As much as I wish I could discuss this with you, I can’t. Not now, though I’m sure you’ll understand in time.”

A knock on the large doors cut him off before he could continue. The young wizard from the desk poked his head through. 

“Lord Greengrass is-” Kingsley raised his hand to cut the boy off from speaking further. 

“Hermione, I’ll be back in a moment. My apologies for the intrusion.”

Hermione nodded and closed her mouth before she could say the first thing that came to mind.

 

When Kingsley closed the door, Hermione let out an exasperated sigh. Her day was far too busy to be kept waiting and then intruded upon. Looking at her watch, Hermione growled in frustration. She was going to be late for her other meetings and lunch with Harry that, though it wasn’t entirely necessary for her job was actually very necessary for her sanity. 

Kingsley had only been gone a few moments when a thick brown folder with papers stuffed into it haphazardly caught her eye. Hermione knew not to look, but couldn’t help herself. She cursed her curiosity and after a minute of straining her ears to hear any hint of Kingsley’s return, Hermione stretched a tentative hand towards the folder.

She tried to open it, but quickly discovered that it was heavily warded.

Curious, Hermione thought to herself, turning it slightly to get a better look. The magical signature very clearly stated that the folder was meant to be in the care of the Department of Magical Law and Enforcement, with instruction to only be opened by a council that Hermione’s couldn’t quite make out.

Trailing her fingers across it as if it were a dusty book, Hermione bit her lip as she pondered what was in the folder that needed to be kept hidden, and what council was so private that even she hadn’t heard of it. An idea struck her, and her fingers sped to the sides of the folder where papers weren’t returned neatly and confidentially. She knew they papers wouldn’t come out, but if she turned through the corners she might be able to find something useful. 

She couldn’t make out anything other than a couple of names, but the two that she saw weren’t helpful in the least. Of course Kingsley would be on it, and of course Lord Greengrass, who acted as head of the DMLE. Hermione took out her wand and examined the folder. It was warded carefully, but predictably. Whoever was in charge of protecting the folder had not anticipated anybody but whatever council it belonged to trying to open it. Hermione could easily hack into it if she was given enough time. They felt awfully similar to the wards she’d been studying in her personal time. It was uncomfortable to admit that she spent an unusual amount of time taking long detours from her daily errands to be near the Department of Magical Law and Enforcement, especially since Ron was frequently inside the short hallway and she rarely went in to greet him. It was a guilty pleasure, she knew, to spend so much of her time absorbing the wards that the DMLE kept. It was her underlying Ravenclaw tendencies demanding that she figure them out entirely, but it was her overbearing Gryffindor-ness that screamed that she ought to find out what was exactly inside the Department, and what was more, what was inside the office that she had only ever been invited into twice by the Lord Hyperion Greengrass himself.

Drawing out her wand, Hermione focused on the folder and with one hand moved her wand in short, deliberate strokes while her other hand tugged on the paper that held a list of names. When it didn't loosen immediately, her brow furrowed and a small beat of sweat collected at the nape of her neck. She pushed more of herself through her wand and after a few more ministrations of her spellwork, the paper tugged itself from the rest of the stack by several inches, allowing her to see several more names. There was Malfoy, not entirely a surprise to her, but the other names caught her eyes. Nott Senior, Francis Galvin, Hubert Cubbins, and perhaps ten more. She recognized some of them from her daily life working in the ministry, and suspicion nagged at the back of her mind when she remembered the group of men Kingsley had been meeting with before their own. Most of the people on the list that she could recognize were there earlier, in that very room. 

She scanned it over and locked it into her memory. 

She was absolutely sure that the entire council had been present, she could remember roughly the same amount of people leaving Kingsley's office. But where were Lord Greengrass and Lucius Malfoy in all that?

It was possible that she just hadn't noticed them, but they were both striking characters and she wasn't sure, even after therapy and years of safety, that she could ever cross paths with Lucius Malfoy and not shiver. She frowned then, wondering if perhaps she really had missed him and if she did, was this a good sign? Was this all a part of healing? 

The fact that she could even miss her superior, Lord Greengrass, astounded her. She'd only ever been invited to his office twice, and both times she resented the childish glee that she remembered feeling when a teacher congratulated her on an essay or an exam she did well on.

Hermione snorted. How she could think of sitting before an entitled pureblood Slytherin an honour, she could not fathom. He was tall, with dark features and a sharp nose. Hermione had gone to school with his two daughters, Daphne in her year and Astoria a few years after, but they didn’t look a thing like their father. Though she couldn’t quite imagine how Daphne looked these days, the pictures of Astoria in all the magazines and newspapers assaulted Hermione with images of perfect pale skin and soft blonde hair. The public engagement between her and the ferret had been announced only two weeks before and since the moment she stepped out with the largest ring Hermione had ever seen, the two of them have been front page stories. 

Resigning herself to her curiosity, Hermione pushed the folder back into position on Kingsley’s desk as the door reopened and the Minister walked in astride Hyperion Greengrass, who curled his lip at her without a word while he reached over her for the folder she had been trying to get into. 

“Good day, Minister,” he said lazily as he bowed slightly before leaving.

 

``````

“I’m just saying, next time you’re late, just please give me a bit of room to nag you about it. It’s not every day I have anything against you,” Harry laughed over his coffee as Hermione rolled her eyes in response.

“You have nothing against me at all, Harry Potter, and I do not nag. Have you seen Ron at all this week?” She asked, changing the subject. She smiled and tried to push down the coiling in her stomach that made her skip ordering anything for lunch other than a strawberry smoothie.

Harry grimaced. 

“Yeah I’ve heard from him, and he’s being a right prat. Just ignore him. Ginny told me he’s thrown another hissy fit and run off on another abroad trip.”

“How many aurors need to be sent abroad?” Hermione huffed, “it seems every time he and I have a row he has an out of the country assignment. How many dark wizards are there?”

Harry smiled, clasping her hands in his while he dipped his head down to steal a sip of her smoothie from the straw haphazardly leaning in his direction. 

Hermione laughed and pushed him away, playfully protecting her drink. 

“Listen, I know Ron’s been difficult, but he just needs some space.”

“Space from what? We don’t live together. We hardly ever see each other and when we do, it’s hardly ever alone!”

“I think that’s part of the problem, honestly. Maybe he’s trying to get you to miss him?” Harry offered, leaning back in his chair.

“That’s possible,” Hermione resigned, sitting back as well. “I don’t care all that much anyway right now.”

Harry raised an eyebrow at her. 

“What?” She asked when Harry didn’t speak.

“You’ve been in a wretched mood, ‘Mione, I doubt you seriously don’t care all that much.”

Hermione nodded. 

“It’s not just about the whole Ron thing. I’ve just spent the past couple hours with a bad stomach ache about something and it’s getting me a bit wired.”

“What is it?” Harry asked, leaning in with a whisper. “Did Kings refuse to add werewolves and veela to the census?”

This time Hermione grimaced. “He didn’t outright refuse, but he wouldn’t tell me why they were excluded in the first place. He said that it wasn’t discriminatory, but that they didn’t fit into the information that the Ministry was looking for. I meant to ask more but Lord Greengrass showed up and bludgered the rest of my meeting with Kingsley. He was too distracted to get anywhere with anything after that, pretty much made the whole meeting a waste of time that, may I remind you, I was kept waiting for.”

Harry’s brows knit together. “That doesn’t make any sense. It was a census, wasn’t it? It should include all of Wizarding Britain, not just a select few.”

Hermione nodded again, slowly. She bit her lip and focused on her smoothie. Something wasn’t sitting well in her stomach. 

“Unless…“Harry started, lowering his voice to barely a whisper. “Unless it wasn’t really a census…”

Hermione cocked her head to the side. “What makes you say that?”

“The stuff they asked for… It wasn’t exactly typical stuff, was it? I understand the age and gender, hell, I even understand asking about our income and allergies and careers, even what bloody house we were sorted into if we went to Hogwarts. But the saliva sample? The hair sample, too? How are those really necessary?”

“Maybe you’ve been blind to what muggles can accomplish with just a saliva sample, but you can easily do ancestry tests with that DNA, and with that DNA, you can also find out a person’s genetic disposition to illnesses and how the body processes or reacts to a great many things.”

“Why would the ministry want to know that stuff though?”

“I don’t know, maybe so we can avoid the exact problems that led to Tom Riddle's success in the future. And maybe those Pureblood families are starting to worry about all that inbreeding they did?”

“What if it’s a way to prove blood purity?”

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. “Excuse me?”

“What if Malfoy and his friends are looking for empirical proof that they’re better?”

“I’ve looked into all of this already, Harry. It’s impossible to find blood purity. Either you have the magical gene or you don’t. There’s no variation depending on who has family members with the gene. Malfoy’s will be no better or worse than mine. If anything, perhaps this saliva test will come back and prove that I have magical lineage somewhere.” Harry nodded to her, silent for once as he sat watching her.

“You don’t look totally convinced, Hermione, and it’s your own argument.” Harry said after a few minutes of silence.

“I know.”

“What else is there that you’re worried about?”

“I- I don’t quite know. I just feel like there’s something I’m missing. For some reason, I keep thinking back to something Kingsley had in his office today.” Hermione looked up at Harry’s interested eyes nearly begging her to continue. Though Fudge and Dumbledore were long gone, Harry’s brain automatically jumped to conspiracies every chance it got.

“I’ve been hearing through the gossip chain that Kingsley’s been holding a bunch of top-secret meetings. He was in one today, it nearly ran me out of the time I had with him for my meeting with him. The whole lot of them were on the Wizengamot and a bunch work as high ranking ministry officials. None were from my department, but I recognized a bunch of them. Then, during the meeting, Hyperion Greengrass just showed up and Kingsley left me alone in his office. I snooped around a bit,” Hermione earned a cheeky grin from Harry at that, “and found a folder that looked suspiciously plain next to all of Kingsley’s colourful papers and whatnot. I took a peek and it was some Council that had some of the same people written on it that were in the office before me. I didn’t recognize most of them but the names sounded familiar.”

“What kind of council? What about it tipped you off?”

Hermione shook her head a bit. 

“I don’t know why it’s got me feeling so weird. It just makes me feel… it makes me feel really bad. I don’t want to doubt Kings, he’s been with us for so many years and he saved our lives so many times during the war…”

“But?”

Hermione looked down solemnly. 

“But he’s not the same as back then. Everything has changed. We’re not fighting for our lives anymore. I want to trust him but something just feels wrong…”

“Look, Hermione. I know you want to believe that Kings has got the best in mind for us. I know I want to believe that. But even I’ve heard rumours going about,” Harry whispered in forced tones. He sounded almost angry as he squared his jaw to keep from attracting any attention.

Hermione looked up at him, skeptical. He looked positively unabashed when he widened his eyes to her. After so many years of trusting Harry’s instincts, Hermione picked up on his body language immediately.

“What do you know, Harry Potter?” Hermione asked hesitantly. 

“We’ve been instructed to keep quiet, but the Auror department recently learned that there will be new legislation put in place soon. Really soon. Like a few months away soon. We’ve been told that we’ll be working security for some people in the ministry after this new law is made public.”

Hermione’s eye twitched. “It’s believed to be unpopular enough to need aurors to protect those that pass it?”

Harry nodded and sat back in his chair. Drumming his fingertips on the table, he absently scratched at his beard and cracked his neck. 

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she said finally after a few minutes of silence. Harry raised his eyes to meet hers and she stared through the sun glinting through his glasses to meet his. 

Then, cutting through the moment, Hermione’s muggle watch started beeping, and Hermione stood and left Harry still pondering conspiracy theories. 

``````````

Later that day, Harry pulled his coat off of the rack at the front door of the Auror Department and turned to say goodnight to the few brave souls who would be working their overnight shift. Ron, who was scheduled for nights this week was gone and as expected, Terry Boot and Andrew Anglehorn were less than pleased by their sudden night in the office alone together.

“Did you see McLaggen’s face when Lord Greengrass came ‘round?” Harry heard Terry Boot say aloud. Cormac’s father, Finian McLaggen, sat as Chief Auror and wasn’t nearly as much of a prick as his son. Whatever it was that made Cormac such a pompous fool in Hogwarts was something his own father clearly wasn’t genetically predisposed to, thank Circe.

“Poor sod’s got too much on his plate,” Andrew replied, tossing a muggle football up in the air. “What do you suppose Greengrass said to him that made him turn white as a ghost? He ran out of here in seconds looking like he ate one of those Weasley treats.”

“Speaking of Weasley’s… how does Ron keep getting out of these shifts? Seriously, mate, any of us would be fired by now if we pulled the shite he pulls.”

“It’s because he’s a war hero, but it’s bullocks. We all fought. We all lost people. Special treatment time should be over.”

Harry sat down in his office, leaving the door open a crack to listen in, but when the conversation turned into prattle about which girls they fancied, Harry leaned back in his chair and contemplated everything Hermione had said over lunch.

She knew to trust him, but even more was that he knew to trust her. While the war ended for him, Hermione still lived in it. She surrounded herself every day with the very people who would have seen her imprisoned or killed, trying to stand up for others like her or worse off. Harry knew that she had become hardened, but the moment she felt genuine fear was the moment he knew he had to stand up. Even if it turned out to be nothing, he would help her.

````````````

Harry pushed open the door to Hermione’s small flat that night and stood with his jaw hanging at the sight of her sitting in the middle of the living room floor with papers adorning the walls and books on the floor. Her hair was pulled back, once in a braid atop her head though by now it hung loosely down her back with stray hairs frizzing around her head. Her eyes were dark and worn, wand between her teeth, as she took a muggle highlighter and highlighted a section of text from a stack of papers in front of her. 

Harry took a tentative step towards her and raised his arms slowly to keep from startling her. 

After so many years of witnessing her sleep-deprived and obsessed, Harry lowered himself to her level and spoke slowly. 

“Hermione,” he whispered, gently pulling the wand from her teeth. 

She barely registered him, but let go of her grip on the wand easily.

“Hermione,” he tried again to get her attention and this time succeeded. Her eyes frantically met his. 

“What is all this?”

“You were right, Harry, you were so right. The census, the memos you’ve been getting,” Hermione lifted a finger to point to a series of stained papers - papers that he’d filed in his office not even 5 hours earlier. How had she gotten them? He’d been in his office until the moment he left to stop by her place… 

“Look here,” she stood and motioned to him to come to stare at all the papers lined up on her walls. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find yarn lines and pictures with their eyes crossed out, but he stood and let her guide his eyes to the section highlight which members of the ministry would be getting their own security detail. There were a few that were a given; Kingsley always had aurors with him, and so did Lord Greengrass. Lucius Malfoy, though, had him scrunching his eyebrows together. He read more names and each confused him more than the one before. 

“Those names all sound familiar, but I don’t have a clue where I know them from…” he murmured. 

Besides him, Hermione nodded and pointed him towards a stack of newspapers and magazines. 

“Almost all of those men have children who have publicly announced engagements in the past month. The others either have no children or children who are married already. But the engagements… they’ve been splashed across every public platform. We’d be hard pressed not to know that Draco is engaged to Daphne’s sister, or that Nott is marrying Slughorn’s great-niece. Ask yourself, why are they all announcing things at the same time, though the wedding dates are so widely spread out?”

Harry read the front pages of all the newspapers and magazines Hermione had gathered into a messy pile and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Why would these specific people need a security detail?”

“Each of these names were on the list I saw in Kingsley’s office.”

Harry looked up to her. “Are you sure?” he asked cautiously. 

“Positive. I watched it all again through the pensieve, “she waved her arm behind her to the kitchen, where a floating pensieve caught Harry’s attention. Where had she gotten a pensieve from? “These are all the names on that council. You know what that means, then.”

Harry peeled his eyes from the pensieve and the mass of papers scattered throughout her living room.

“Sorry, what? What does this mean?”

Hermione’s eyes glinted with frustration. 

“We’re going to break into Lord Greengrass’ office. Tonight. I know I can get into the folder if I have enough time.”

Harry’s face paled. 

“Excuse me? Hermione, are you insane? You could be thrown into Azkaban for even just the suggestion of that. He’s dangerous”

“Come now, Harry, I wouldn’t ask you to do this with me if I had no clue what I was going. I’ve spent months studying the wards around the DMLE-” Harry’s brows shot up at that. “I know I can do it. I just need the time.”

This time Hermione's eyes conveyed no frustration. Instead, Harry was astounded to see sparks of excitement course through her, hints of it in her hair and in her eyes. Nodding, Harry took off his jacket and strode into the kitchen. He filled the kettle with water and placed it on the burner before turning to sift through her cupboards for two mugs and tea bags.

“Walk me through your plan,” Harry sighed, turning towards her and leaning back on the counter. “I trust you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year's Eve!  
> I hope your 2019 is beautiful and passionate, and that the stars will shine for you wherever you are!

Harry strode into the ministry intending to look like he was there with a sense of purpose, much like he did when he was on a case. He tried envisioning himself hurrying through the halls as if he had an urgent problem; a dark wizard on the loose or an attack that he was to see to. 

Though, however much he wanted to appear absolutely in charge and in control of the situation, he couldn’t help the occasional delays that had him stopping every so often to… check his watch. Or his shoes. Had he dropped something? Maybe he should pretend to clean his glasses. 

He guessed that if anybody were actually watching him, they’d pick up on some very curious body language, some very vague puttering, and some awfully strange noises that seemed to appear from absolutely nowhere.

Luckily for Harry, though, most people passed him without a second glance. It was dark out, and though he wasn’t scheduled to work security, he came in frequently enough in his free time that only a select few would question him, no matter the odd behaviour.

The DMLE wasn’t hard to find, it was labeled very well and easy to direct people to as there were large signs pointing to it just as there were signs pointing to bathrooms. The only problem, or rather… the first problem… was that Harry had to pass through a bunch of other departments and pass by a lot of people to get to his office. Normally he was fine, but normally he didn’t have Hermione walking behind him draped in his invisibility cloak.

“Don’t keep looking back,” she hissed as he turned to glance at her again just to make sure that they wouldn’t be given away by something as trivial as feet brushing under the cloak. He knew, of course, that she was small enough to walk with the cloak and not have any problems being covered. But he also knew that she had a bad habit of holding it up around her feet to keep her from tripping on it.

“Then make sure to keep the hems down in front of your feet. I’ve seen your shoes twice already,” he responded, trying to keep his voice down. 

Hermione snorted. 

“You’re walking too fast for me to safely walk behind you the way you’re suggesting. Would it be better if I tripped up and blew the whole plan?”

Harry rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t even see why you need the cloak. You work late all the time, and so do I. You’re my best friend, ‘Mione. We’ve been known to wander together during breaks if we’re both here after hours. Nobody would think anything’s awry if they were to see us casually strolling through the ministry,” he grumbled, partially amused by her muffled huffs and partially anxious about their intended heist.

“I don’t want there to be any trace that I was here. So,” she elaborated, “nothing can be out of the ordinary. You have to do exactly as you usually do, which is precisely why we used the floo you normally come in and not the closest one.”

“I like the walk,” Harry said defensively.

“I never attacked your walk, keep your voice down. What I’m trying to get at is that if they somehow figure out that the wards have been tampered with, I want there to be no record of your magical signature on anything. That way they can’t suspect either of us. You couldn’t have done it and I wasn’t even there to do it in the first place. That’s why it has to be business as usual. Nothing out of place.”

“Your signature is just as distinct as mine, and I doubt very much that Greengrass wouldn’t assume straight away that I’m the one to have gotten you in. If he recognizes your magic at all, we’re done for.”

“I’m sorry, Harry, but did we not agree on this plan before we left?” She asked, tripping up on the cloak again until she fell over in it, her feet flashing out from underneath. She gasped and hid her feet quickly just as Harry coughed loudly and dropped his briefcase, spilling out a handful of papers all across the floor around them, drawing eyes to himself just in the moment that Hermione was making the most amount of noise. She rolled her eyes under the cloak and crossed her arms, waiting for the people to keep walking. 

“Need any help?” He asked quietly, a smile tugging at his lips. 

“As if that wouldn’t look suspicious. ‘Oh, look at that suspicious boy as he strangely gestures about the air, how suspicious that is.’ No thank you, just please collect your things and quit talking so loud, people are going to notice and-”

“And think I’m acting suspiciously? Yeah, I picked up on that. Besides, I only did that to make up for the noise you were making, jeez Hermione, you’re not as conspicuous as you’d like to believe.”

Chuckling, Harry collected his things and secured them in his briefcase when he felt a cloaked hand press up against his back as Hermione did, in fact, use him to help her up. He smiled cheekily without looking up at her or acknowledging her and stood, stretched his arms wide (rather suspiciously, Hermione noted), and made towards the large atrium.

Hermione’s eyes darted around the hallways and open areas, zeroing in on the strangers and bystanders still milling around though the work day was long over. There were the predictable temps and interns, rushing about though their eyes were well worn and bleary. She remembered back to when she herself was an intern for the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. Arthur had graciously given her an opportunity to intern for the Obliviation Headquarters and, while she was very good at the work and very pleased with her results, she found that it bore too close of a resemblance to the obliviation she’d performed on her parents. The department was sad to see her go in the end, but that’s when she was hired on by the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and she found that she quite enjoyed getting paid. 

She watched with a ghost of envy on her lips as the interns, indisputably working for the Department of Magical Games and Sports, ran about in frenzied groups trying to stick large posters up against the walls of the hallways and atriums.

Beyond the laughable young groups were the people just like Hermione and Harry; people they’d grown up with who either had it made or were still in the process of making it. The former rarely stayed late, though Hermione spied a particular Theodore Nott sitting on a bench staring absently at a group of interns as they tried to hoist up a young woman attempting to pull down a poster someone had stuck up incorrectly. The remaining people around were either night shifts, antisocial people who chose to work when it was mostly quiet, and Aurors working security. Hermione had a nagging feeling that both she and Harry would find themselves middle-aged and becoming the people who worked night shifts; her for the work and Harry for the silence.

As they finally rounded the corner to the DMLE’s short hallway, Harry paused outside the door and motioned for Hermione to come closer to him. 

“Listen, I want you to stay out here until I give you the signal. Don’t come in until they’re gone. Give them a wide berth, remember?”

Hermione rolled her eyes and nodded.

“I’m going to assume you’re either nodding or I’m having a very secret conversation with a very engaging, yet quiet, wall.” 

“Harry!” 

“Alright alright, no secret wall conversations right now. Those will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ll see you in my office then,” he whispered with a wink before turning to enter the bullpen.

As it happened, Hermione barely had to wait at all for Harry to get rid of the two men. Within a minute they were pushing open the door and laughing all the way down the hallway as they made their way to the closest floo exit and disappeared. 

She pulled off the cloak when she entered Harry’s office and set it down on one of the chairs. Harry’s back was to her and he was bent over a large filing cabinet, checking the walls of the inside and knocking on it in different places. 

“What did you tell them to get them to leave?” She asked while she pulled her hair into a tight bun on the nape of her neck. She couldn’t have it in the way when she started with Lord Greengrass’ office, so she made extra sure that it was secure on the back of her head by casting a few sticking charms.

“Something about Ron returning to a less than pleasant conversation…”

This piqued her attention. 

She whipped her head around so quickly her neck cracked, giving her a slightly uncomfortable headache. ‘Not a great start,’ she thought to herself before remembering what he’d just said.

“Ron’s coming back tonight?”

Harry’s eyes widened a bit and his hands shot up to his sides as if she were arresting him in a muggle cop movie. 

“Not at all, just said that to get them out of here. You know I’d tell you if he were coming back, yeah?”

Hermione nodded to him and then took a deep breath. Looking up expectantly at Harry, he nodded in return and led her towards Lord Greengrass’ office. After so long together, they rarely needed to speak. They molded to body language and cues so far back that neither could remember when they’d become so familiar with each other’s body or their habits.

Hermione smiled when she reached the office, she smiled because she recognized it immediately through feeling the wards. It brought her comfort during her detours; she admired the talent that went into creating and maintaining the protective wards and though Harry might be miffed to learn how fast she would dismantle them, electricity coursed through her yet again. 

Harry leaned forwards to wiggle his fingers through them. 

He was given lots of responsibilities for an Auror his age. He had his own office, had his own mailbox in the ministry and even had a verbal offer from both Lord Greengrass and Finian McLaggen that when McLaggen retired in about a year or two the job would be Harry’s. All this in mind, Harry was slightly dismayed when the wards didn’t automatically open up to him. He’d never been keyed into them, but the hope was there, and now it wasn’t. 

Putting the thought behind him, Harry whistled quietly. 

“There’re a lot of wards in here, ‘Mione, how do you suppose you’ll get through them?”

Hermione took a deep breath and removed a shrunken notebook and a pencil from her pocket. Handing them to Harry, who enlarged them and sat down with the papers, she took a step towards the wards and touched her wand to the outer shell of it. 

It was a basic repellant; a simple charm meant to disorient anybody who ought not be there. Harry probably couldn’t even feel it, but she could. She could feel it clouding her mind already, so she took a step back and looked at Harry.

“We’re going to dismantle them one by one, and you’re going to write down each one. If we ever need to get in again, I want to have a spell ready to do it all in one verse.”

Harry’s jaw dropped. 

“Hermione no. No, no, no. No. No. There are probably 30 different wards in there and any number of them could be dangerous, if not deadly.”

“Hush, Harry. It’s not like I’m going to take them down completely. I’m just going to put in a bit of a wedge, just enough for us to pass under it. Like a waterfall, Harry, imagine the wards as a waterfall. We just need a good sturdy rock to put up.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and held up her wand, already working on the disorientation charm. It took a minute, but it flaked down around her like tiny invisible snowflakes. When the last touched the ground, she smiled and turned towards Harry, instructing his note-taking.

``  
Every ward that Hermione broke through, that she dismantled piece by piece, hit Harry with a worse feeling. There was no way to describe the mounting anxiety. Sure, he’d felt it earlier when Hermione had told him about her fears. Worse, even, when he turned up at her flat to see the horror that was her living room. 

But neither could compare to the now mountainous pile of worry he’d accumulated in the hours of impatiently waiting. 

He couldn't bear to just sit idly by. He wanted to get in there and help. His job was like a seal of approval that he was actually good at this stuff; he did a whole lot of curse breaking and the whole lot in his line of duty. Nothing quite like Ron’s brother, but impressive nonetheless. 

All he could do was offer assistance when he could. But just as she’d said, she was incredibly prepared for the task at hand. She must have been studying the wards diligently over the months; she could pick them apart between her fingers if she wanted to. But some were harder to break down than others, and some of them fought back. Fire licked her fingers and crisped her eyebrows down to a shadow. 

It would have been funny.

But it wasn’t.

``

When the door finally clicked open, Harry and Hermione stood in shock.

They’d done it. They’d broken into Lord Greengrass’ office…

Harry felt an immediate wave of nausea pass through him. The past hours made him numb, his whole body tingled. 

Harry jumped to his feet, pushed Hermione behind him and raised his wand. Gently giving the door a firm shove, it creaked open slowly. 

He expected something to jump out at him, but nothing did. 

Instead, all was silent. 

There wasn’t a sound apart from the heavy breathing.

Hermione put a hand on his shoulder, urging him to move forward.

They moved into the room quietly, looking around them. 

His large office was neatly organized and beautifully decorated. A soft brown couch welcomed them into the room, begged to be sat on, but was ignored. The desk was massive; Hermione put her hands on it and inhaled the rich wood, momentarily losing herself in it. 

“Over here,” Harry said with a grin. “I cast an unbinding spell on it. It’ll take a while, but they’ll open up and we can see everything Greengrass has been up to.”

Hermione turned around to see Harry poised over a large filing cabinet. It was open as far as Harry could open it and inside it lay a large stack of folders that radiated small bursts of light that Hermione recognized as the unbinding spell. He cast a Lumos charm over the dark corner and Hermione rolled her eyes before turning to flick on the lights. 

Harry blinked in the new light and turned to give Hermione a look when he saw her face. 

It looked pale as it fixated on something just beyond him… Harry craned his neck to see behind him, where Hermione was staring, and he dropped his wand. 

On the wall, on the entire wall from one side to the other, was a huge chart. It reminded him of the Black Family Tree Sirius had shown him, but instead of charting a single family, as the Black tree had, this one seemed to contain everyone he could think of.

On one side was Hannah Abbott, and then Mafalda Hopkins to the left. The names seemed to be shimmering and Harry’s eyes squinted as he tried to read the smaller names all around. Lines, red lines and blue lines, black lines, yellow lines, green lines, so many lines covered the wall. It nearly looked like Hermione’s flat, except this was… this was elaborately done, painstakingly created rather than an evening’s work. 

Harry stood to trace some of the lines with his fingers and found himself drawn to the glittery golden lines. They dotted the huge chart, sometimes spread out and sometimes in clusters.

As he approached them, though, he realized that the lines were not connecting people, as he’d thought. Instead, they contained a number just beneath the person’s name. His eyes followed the numbers, skipping over the names until he found his own. 

24550

Just beside him, now tracing her own fingers across the chart, Hermione raised her wand.

There was a tug on her arm, and she felt the wand lead her to her own place on the chart. There was a brief set of lines attached to her name; there were simple grey lines that faded out of the paper entirely, presumably fading out to represent her muggle heritage. But there were also several thicker lines sprawling in all sorts of directions and connecting to so many random people. One led straight to Terry Boot, which made Hermione want to laugh at the coincidence of that. She couldn’t think of a single reason why they’d ever be put side by side, let alone connected in a large chart of this magnitude. 

A thought struck her then, as she lay her fingers over Terry’s shimmering name, that perhaps the cords showed distant relatives. 

“Maybe that’s what the census was for… Maybe it was to create a full genealogy map of Wizarding Britain,” she mumbled, half to herself. 

“That wouldn’t explain the werewolf and veela exclusion though…” Harry replied, hardly paying attention to her. 

Hermione sighed. 

“We don’t even know if this is what we’re here to look for.” 

“I’d reckon it is. See this?” Harry pointed towards the shimmering names of Draco Malfoy and a taut gold line tying him to Astoria Greengrass. 

Hermione squinted at it and turned her head a bit to the side.

Lifting her wand again, she looked for Theo Nott’s name. Immediately she was drawn to him and the taut gold line tying him straight across the chart to Slughorn’s great-niece, Cassis Beaumont.

She looked back to Draco and followed the line back to Astoria Greengrass. From there she found Daphne, whose name glittered, with a line formed between her name and a name far across the chart that Hermione couldn’t read from where she stood.

“What do you suppose the numbers mean?” Harry asked, following the same train of investigation.

“They look almost like…” she paused as she contemplated her words carefully. “They look almost like serial numbers. Like we’re being recorded.”

“What would they be recording, though? What’s the point of all this?”

“Well,” Hermione started, just as confused as Harry. “First we have to ask why werewolves and veela aren’t here. That was our first clue, so let’s follow that lead. What about them wouldn’t fit into what we see here?”

Harry scrunched his nose and leaned back on Greengrass’ desk. 

“The easy answer is that they’re different.”

“Different how, though? Werewolves have a condition that alters them only once a month. And yes, veela have a fundamental difference in their genetic makeup, but that doesn’t even inhibit their ability to reproduce with regular wizards or witches. So what if the child is half veela? So what if a werewolf has a kid that doesn’t grow up to hate werewolves? So what if-”

“Wait, go back. What about reproduction?”

“Veela pass on their genes, just like ancestry. Like Fleur, remember?”

Harry nodded. 

“But what if that’s why they’re excluded? What if it’s because of reproduction?”

Hermione bit her lip. 

“I suppose that could be a possibility… But why -”

There was a loud dinging noise and Hermione’s hands flew up to her ears. She turned, white-faced to Harry, to see him not at all phased. He instead calmly turned around and returned to the filing cabinet where his unbinding spell seemed to have finally worked. 

Hermione took a step towards him as he opened the folder and she paused to take a deep breath. 

They were doing the right thing. 

She just had to keep reminding herself of that. 

“What do they say, Harry?”

“They’re minutes from meetings. This one’s almost minutes, actually, but I’m guessing there’s more stuff throughout.” Harry closed the folder and passed it off to her. “I can’t make heads or tails of notes like that. Could you give it a go?”

Hermione took the folder to the desk and sat down in Lord Greengrass’ chair while Harry set about opening a new folder. 

Hermione scanned the papers, flipping over the introductions and after approving that the names on the papers were, in fact, the names she’d had written upon her walls, she dove head first into the folder. 

```

Hermione rubbed her eyes, rereading the paragraph over again.

“It’s a marriage law, Harry…” Hermione choked out. “It’s a fucking marriage law. The numbers… they’re serial numbers, alright. They’re stamping us like cattle and forcing us together. We won’t even have a choice in any of it, dear Gods, Harry, it’s a fucking Marriage Law oh my god Harry, a marriage law...”

With her eyes glued to the page, she reread the paragraph again. 

“Harry, are you listening to me? I said that -”

She looked up, wide-eyed, to find Harry already staring at her. 

His eyes were bloodshot, his face white. 

Hermione’s brows knit together. 

“Harry, did you hear me?”

He nodded slowly to her. 

“What’s wrong? What did you find?”

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. 

“Harry, what is it?

“No,” he whispered urgently. Hermione stood and took a step towards him, still hunched on the floor over a folder whose contents were now spread out all across the floor. She hadn’t even noticed him frantically putting the pieces together on his own.

“No,” he said again, voice cracking. Not him. Not for her.

“What is it, Harry? What have you found?” Hermione asked when she was just over him, deft hands leaning down to pick up the papers he had in front of him. Harry’s eyes flashed, and he ground one of his knees over the papers Hermione now tried to pry from under him.

“Harry,” she continued, only to glance up and see the look of abject horror on his face. 

“Harry, please,” she pleaded with him, fear growing in her stomach, making her nauseous. “Is it a what, or a who that’s made you this pale? Who are you paired with? Harry, please, what’s going on?”

“We’ll fight this, ‘Mione, you won’t have to be with this… this person.”

Something fluttered in Hermione’s stomach at his words. She gulped and felt a bit limp for a moment before regaining her composure.

“You’re scaring me, Harry, who is it?”

Hermione tugged at the papers again, pulling them just enough to reveal her own name in golden letters, shimmering under her fingertips. Harry leaped down, tearing the paper where the other name would have been. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes; as foolish as he was acting, he was acting out of fear and anger, and Hermione knew to trust his instincts by now. 

Well, mostly trust his instincts. Right now she’d rather hex him to the ground so she could see what he’s hiding.

“What, is it McLaggen?” Her voice quivered, “or, heaven forbid, it’s not Malfoy is it? It can’t be, he’s engaged to Greengrass’ daughter.” She pursed her lips, trying to dismiss the feeling of absolute devastation that she felt would come any moment now.

“No, it’s not either of them. Hermione, it’s not fair. I won’t tell you, not yet…”

“That decision is not up to you, Harry Potter.”

Her hair sparked out of anger now, the fear had left her and now all she felt was fury towards the ministry, towards Kingsley and towards her very best friend who wouldn’t tell her her own fate. 

“I just - I need you to know that I’ll get you out of this. You won’t have to go through with it. I promise. I’ll do everything I can, anything to protect you.”

A tear dropped from her face and she realized that she had many more emotions crashing within her than she realized. 

On top of fear, she felt devastated by the news that she wasn’t going to be given the chance to choose her own life. Her own love. She thought of Ron and the guilt that she felt when something inside her felt a bit relieved at not having to break up with him. 

Hermione chastised herself for the thought, it made no sense. She loved Ron. She still loves him, there’s not loved to talk about. She loved him. She definitely loves him. That’s why she’s been putting up with all his bullshit. Because she loves him.

But that was making a mountain of a molehill when there was an actual mountain to deal with.

She didn’t just feel betrayed by the very society she fought to protect, she was actually betrayed and backstabbed. She nearly died for what? To not get to experience love the way her parents had? She put her life on the line to campaign for change and now… Now she could understand why Kingsley said that people wouldn’t like change when it happened to them. 

She’d supported him, but never thought that she’d be one of the people protesting the very change she put her life on the line for. 

How could he?

And now, she was going to be forced to marry someone?

“Who is it, Harry?”

“It’s Dolohov, Hermione. It’s him.”

Hermione held resolute. She squared her shoulders and wiped the tears from her eyes as she processed the words he spoke, as she digested it all.

“I don’t understand. How could- How?”

“I guess since he wasn’t found guilty… But he hurt you, we have proof of that!”

“It won’t matter. He’s already been found innocent. Nobody can prove he did any of it willingly. Of course he’d be included. I just-I. I don’t-”

Hermione curled over and threw up on the floor.

“Are… we should get out of here. Head back to your place, yeah?”

Hermione nodded, numb.

She could hardly feel her fingers as they set about scourgifying the vomit from the floor. She knelt down on her knees and examined the carpeted floors, poking fingers to where she’d just cleaned.

Harry jumped into action around her, folding papers back into the folders when Hermione held up an urgent hand. 

“Wait,” she said hoarsely, her voice just above a whisper. 

Crawling towards the folders, Hermione touched her wand to them and whispered something beneath her breath, too quiet for Harry to hear. She closed her eyes over the folders and, if it was even possible at this point, Harry thought he saw even more colour drain from her skin.

She took a moment before closing the folder and handing back to Harry, moving on to the next one. 

When the room was clean once again and free of any sign they’d been there, Hermione and Harry exited the office and closed the door quietly behind them. 

The wards were much easier to put up than to take apart. Much faster, too, Hermione noticed, if she could notice time at all. All she had to do was remove her wedge, her rock, and the waterfall fell down around the office again. It might have taken an hour. It might have taken two. Maybe three, probably even it might have been a matter of minutes. But Hermione couldn’t feel it, she didn’t want to. 

“I’ll be right back,” Harry said, “we’ve got to go. We’re going to make a run for it, to the nearest floo. It won’t get us exactly where we want to go, it’s keyed to Diagon Alley. But I’ll apparate us to your place from there, alright?”

She couldn’t feel herself nod, didn’t know she nodded at all. She just knew that he wasn’t beside her anymore and it felt colder somehow.

Finally, Harry came back from his own office with the invisibility cloak and threw it over her without a word. He folded his arms around her, held her tight, before pulling her out into the open ministry where the early risers were starting to filter through.

None bothered them as he whisked through them, nobody noticed the strange shoulder rubs that they easily passed off as another person beside them. They didn’t even bother looking enough to notice that there was nobody beside them at all. 

But under the cloak, Hermione felt like she wasn’t entirely real. She didn’t know how she was going to walk normally, how she would go to sleep and not relive that one night when they broke into the ministry all those years ago. She didn’t think she could even blink without seeing that man’s face in the darkness.

Therapy helped her, it helped her so much with her PTSD and her ongoing trauma recovery, but so much of her healing was based around never having to face the fears she fought as a teenager. 

And now… now the prospect of being forced to marry a monster she still woke up screaming about every once in a while… it felt like a cold ball of ice in her chest that seemed to radiate through her body until her fingertips felt like they were full of snow, frozen and close to cracking off. 

Hermione blinked and she was standing on a busy street. 

The cloak was gone and she could feel the breeze touching her lightly, softly, gently, and she wondered if she should start bottling up the memories of anything light, soft, gentle, for the future.

She blinked again and she was in her flat with Harry beside her. She rubbed her eyes with numb hands and aimed her wand and a large stack of clean papers. 

Touching it gently, ink seeped from her wand onto the paper and started forming words, then sentences. 

Harry watched as her fingers, now black, started to tremble. Her eyes were closed, head tipped back, as she took deep breaths. 

When she finally collapsed into him, he moved her softly to her couch and set her down.

He brushed a few hairs from her face and smiled at its inability to be tamed. At Hermione’s inability to be tamed. 

He sat down on the floor in front of Hermione and put the papers in front of him. He flipped through the first few until he realized that she’d transferred the entire set of thick folders into cramped copies.

How had she held all of that within her?

He looked back to her and felt her skin. 

It was cold to the touch. Harry frowned and cast a warming charm over her and watched as her shivering stopped. 

Once he was sure she was comfortable, he turned back to the papers and pulled out a highlighter and began reading the minutes he’d passed off to her earlier. 

He’d find a way to get her out of this. 

He’d do everything he could to get her out of this. 

Anything. 

Anything at all.


	3. Chapter 3

When Harry wakes he is slumped against Hermione’s couch with his legs sprawled out underneath her coffee table. He’s disoriented at first until last night pounds back into his skull. He blinked his eyes under his lopsided glasses and squinted as everything becomes clearer in front of him. 

He obviously hadn’t slept well, he knew by the crick in his neck that something was amiss. But he couldn’t even remember when he’d fallen asleep in the first place, let alone what way he let his head hang while he slept. He couldn’t even be entirely sure he wasn’t still sleeping, by the smell of eggs and bacon wafting through the room. Through all the confusion and disorientation, the last thing he expected was for eggs and bacon to be prepared in the kitchen. 

And then there was the light streaming in from the window. It felt soft against his skin and warm, though everything in him told him that it should be cold and stormy outside. How dare the sun shine when it was all falling to pieces around him, when it was all-

Harry paused when he heard the distinctly familiar sound of pen against paper.

He turned around slowly and that’s when he noticed the quiet music flowing through the flat. He couldn’t quite make it out at first but after a minute of straining silently his ears started to function again and the soft hum of the steady sound bled through him until he felt almost… almost calm…

Harry blinked and groaning loudly.

Hermione glanced up at him then, thankful that the snoring must finally be over.

“Would you like any tea?” She asked, her voice calm and serene. She was wearing a comfortable pair of leggings and a light pink jumper that complimented her dark eyes and hair nicely.

He stared at her with his mouth open to speak, but he wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure what there was to say at all, he didn’t understand what had changed between last night and this morning, how she could flip the switch between hysterics and harmony. It seemed oddly disconcerting to him, and Harry had to try his hardest to recount the past 24 hours. But if Harry remembered correctly, and he was absolutely sure that he did, Hermione should be wearing all black, as should he, and they should both be mourning together and the sky should be pouring, it should be hailing hard enough to break through Gringotts. 

And cold, it should be cold too. So cold that they’d need a fire to warm them but even fire wouldn't be able to do it and they’d freeze happily so they wouldn't have to deal with…

So they wouldn’t have to deal with the most unforgivable of curses he could think of. To condemn people to a fate completely out of their own hands. For Hermione to be dealt a fate worse than death. For Harry to- no. He couldn’t think about that. 

He looked up at Hermione to find a peaceful smile on her face. Strange...

“What’re you doing?” He finally asked, breaking the silence with hoarse words.

“Took the day from work. I called the Auror’s office too, told them you were down with some muggle illness infecting single men… You are officially cleared from duty until you’ve returned to perfect health.”

Harry balked. Glancing past her to the blinking clock on the other side of the room, he realized that he was well late for his shift this morning.

“Hermione, what are you doing? Last night… Last night was awful. I don’t expect you to go to work ever again if you didn't want to. Hell, I’d help you run away. I’d help you fake your own death if you wanted me to. Shit, ‘Mione, I was expecting more of an, I don’t know. I was expecting more of a reaction than,” he waved dramatically at her, “this.”

Hermione bristled at his words, her serenity slipping away and revealing a cold interior. 

So that’s where it was.

“There’s no use getting all upset about the matches, Harry,” she told him sternly as if warning him not to argue with her. 

“Wha-”

“What I mean is that this law is flawed. It has to be. These matches,” she gestured to the large stacks of papers organized by folder and subcategory within the folders. “These matches are rudimentary at best. It would be insane if these were final. Most of these are fine matches, but the rest? Besides, Kingsley wouldn’t do this to us.”

“What do you mean by that? He’s obviously not got our best intentions at heart if this is what he’s up to.”

“Kingsley’s smart, Harry. There’s no way he could rightly dismiss this law. Not if it was proposed with such a backing. It would only turn his own Wizengamot against him, and then he won’t be able to get anything done for the rest of his time as Minister.”

Hermione bit her lip. 

“No,” she continued. “He’d have to back them publicly. But maybe he knew we’d get suspicious. Maybe he planted just enough clues to get us involved so we could figure out the whole plan. Maybe I was supposed to see that folder on his desk, maybe he knew that leaving werewolves and veela out of the census would mean I’d be in his office to see him and he scheduled my appointment right after that council meeting, that can’t all have been just a series of coincidences… Maybe we’re supposed to stop this from ever happening, Harry! Think of it! It makes complete sense!”

Harry regarded her softly, understanding dawning through his chest. 

That’s why she felt so… so OK this morning. Denial… it was a tricky thing to live with when it blinded you from seeing everything you don’t want to see.

Harry picked up a stack of papers and picked through them idly. 

“Have you found anything at all to support that theory?” He asked, and watched out of the corner of his eyes as her chin seemed to fall an inch. 

“Any loopholes?” Her chin fell a few more. 

“There has to be something, Harry…” She whispered. 

He adjusted his glasses just as she raised her knees to her chest and hugged them close.

“There must be a way out of this.” She said; something he heard her say in her sleep over and over until sleep took him as well. “This is barbaric, it’s- It’s just that there’s no way people like the Malfoys would actually have to go along with this. They’ve already announced an engagement. Imagine forcing two powerful pureblood families to break off a union like that. It wouldn’t happen. And if they won’t have to break off their engagement for this, if they’re allowed to get married, then that means there’s a way out of this. That means we’ll find a loophole, or at least some way to get out of it before it’s too late, which looks to be… January 16th. We’ve got about two months and a bit to figure out a plan.” Hermione’s brows knit together, furrowing as she pondered over the papers in front of her. 

“Does it say anything about it in the minutes that you looked at?”

Hermione shook her head as she rifled through the papers on her lap, looking for something in particular. Then she gestured to a large stack on the table in front of her.

“I haven’t had the chance to go through that pile yet. Maybe you could take a look and see if you find anything. If you do, mark it and we’ll come back when we’ve gone through everything…”

Harry pursed his lips and nodded, silently resigning himself to the thick folder in front of him. 

“Also… I was meaning to ask… Did you try calling Ron at all last night? I tried him three times this morning but I think he’s still mad at me from Tuesday. We could really use some help here, and considering he’s just as involved in this as we are he should really be here.”

“I tried every way I could last night, he isn’t answering yet. But he’ll get the messages, ‘Mione, don’t worry about him. I expect he’ll be over when he can.”

He watched as his friend put her face in her hands and took a deep shaking breath. 

“Hey,” he started at the first hint of her resolve starting to fall. He could hear her breath start to quicken beside him and he rushed to think of something to distract her from everything at hand, even if it was something small. Even if it only distracted her for a moment. 

“Do I smell eggs and bacon?” He offered. “I’m absolutely famished.”

Hermione jumped at the chance to do something other than pour over hundreds of pages of mind-numbing conversation. Most of the minutes were nothing but petty chatter, nothing useful. Maybe some discussion here and there about how to avoid being prosecuted by the public upon revelation, but there was hardly anything of use. Nothing useful. Nothing Useful. There wasn’t anything useful, dear Gods what if they couldn’t use any of what they’d broken into the ministry to find… 

Hermione took a deep breath as she took the eggs and bacon from their stasis charm and inhaled the smells. Maybe Harry would find something in his folder after all. He said he’d do everything he could, and last time he did everything he could he sacrificed himself for all of them. 

Hermione wouldn’t let him give up everything for her, not by a long shot, but she trusted in his ability to dedicate himself to a task and succeed. 

She would accept his time. 

She would accept his help. 

She would accept his kindness. 

But that’s all she could do.

 

````

Harry could hardly focus on the words in front of his eyes anymore. It was past lunchtime and his stomach grumbled. They’d barely eaten anything since earlier and while Harry was starting to feel the void in his stomach, every time he turned around to ask Hermione if she wanted to order in food, she held a finger up to silence him.

She was so drawn in, obsessed, with her reading that she could hardly process anything else. 

It didn’t matter how many pages were marked with brightly coloured sticky notes with circled and highlighted portions to look back to. It didn’t matter that Hermione’s walls were looking more and more complicated as she started pinning up known matches from the sheets she occasionally went through as a form of a “break” from her “real work.”

There was a firm knock on the door and Harry jumped at the noise. He turned to Hermione, but she barely registered the sound of the knocking. 

It was loud, intentional. It had a pattern to it, almost like a song. 

Harry breathed a sigh of relief and stood to answer. 

When Ginny walked through, she blinked at the mess of the room and scrunched her nose. 

“Hey, Gin,” he greeted her as he helped her take a large group of spread out papers.

She paused in the middle of the room and held a hand to her head.

“Um… is all this for the-?” She asked, her voice a bit faint. 

Harry nodded. “Yeah, and don’t worry. We’re trying to figure out a way to stop the law from being passed, but-”

“Who am I paired with?” she interrupted, justifiably disoriented.

Harry readjusted his glasses and looked at her, really looked at her as more than a face with red hair. It hurt to look at her as more, to take down the blurry glass wall he put in front of her whenever he even just thought of her. She was beautiful… she IS beautiful. Her smile, her freckles, her eyes, her lips…

Harry blinked and they were all there. All except for the smile, which was turned into a grimace as she shivered despite the heat in the flat. He could tell she’d been crying, that she was scared. 

“Er... You’ve been paired with Oliver Wood.” He looked down. 

“Oliver Wood? As in… Quidditch-Captain-Oliver from school?” She widened her eyes and then pursed her lips contemplatively. She could almost smile just from the relief of it all. “I guess that’s not so bad… I was expecting a lot worse when you rang mum and dad. They’ve been crying ever since…” 

Ginny looked past Harry to Hermione, and then back to him.

He shook his head and looked down. 

“Have you heard from Ron? This is a bit urgent…”

Ginny nodded. “Yeah, he called me while he was on his way out of the ministry the other day. Said that him and,” she flicked her eyes up towards Hermione and back, “had a bit of a disagreement and he needed to get some space. I’m not sure when he’s supposed to be back, but it wasn’t made out to be a particularly long mission. Has he not called any of you back since you found out?”

Harry shook his head, and Ginny frowned. It wasn’t like him to not respond to the Auror’s office.

“He’s being a right pain in the arse, Gin. Thanks for coming over so quickly, I know you were busy.”

“Not busy enough, but no worries. Is there anything I can do?”

Harry laughed a bit, not actually, and looked around.

“I’ll let you take a look around and ask any questions. It’s a lot to deal with, and it looks a lot more daunting than it actually is, I promise. We’re marking things off what we want to return to with these sticky papers,”

“I remember you showing me those a couple years ago. Really handy, those are,” Ginny added, pulling a few from Hermione’s pad and unpeeling them. Harry winced. 

“Yeah, super handy. Anyways, we have a few things to look back to. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover, but we figured it would be better to involve all of you rather than leave you to the sharks.”

Ginny nodded. “Thanks again, Harry. I know this is all a bit weird, but I’m really happy you called me.”

Harry smiled again, a small smile that wasn’t really a smile at all, and Ginny knew that it wasn’t really a smile but a face he made when he tried to look different than he felt.

“Alright,” she said, uncomfortably rubbing her hands together. “Put me to work! Can I start with making anything for lunch? Any tea?”

Harry smiled for real this time, a wide grin. 

“Yes. Absolutely. Anything sounds amazing, I’m starving.”

 

``````

 

Harry bolted upright in his chair, gasping. Hermione jumped at the noise, startled, and Ginny came running from Hermione’s room, where she’d taken to setting up an expansive list of all the pairings. 

“Harry, what is it?” Hermione asked as she put a hand on his shoulder.

“It says here that if there is a legitimate reason for not being able to fulfill his/her required duty, an appeal must be made within one week of the law being announced.”

“That’s perfect! We have legitimate reasons to not be paired, Dolohov is a monster who nearly murdered me and you don’t even know your match!” Hermione referenced the woman Ginny had discovered Harry to be paired with. Her name was Aline and she was French. Never even went to Hogwarts, from what any of them could figure out. She was a good deal older than them, probably 7 years older.

“I knew we had to have been working ourselves up over nothing,” she continued. “Kingsley wouldn’t let us be handed over into a binding marriage without giving us any free will.” 

Hermione breathed out excitedly as if she were letting all the stress of the ordeal fall right through her. She took the paper from Harry to reread it and wove it between her fingers.

She frowned slightly, then, as she read through the bit Harry read aloud.

“What is it?” He asked warily, stepping aside to let Ginny stand to pass him. She looked down at him, silently enquiring about tea again. He shook his head with a taut smile.

“Nothing, nothing, sorry- but how did we not find this sooner? I’m only just now reading what the DMLE counts as a valid reason to be excluded from this process…”

Harry shrugged. “And? What counts?”

Hermione looked up, her face soft and gentle despite the obvious pain she felt. 

“Well, first of all, the pairings list wouldn’t be released until a week after all the appeals have been made. I assume this is some attempt to save the Ministry from facing too much backlash over their matches, but we already know our pairs so that isn’t a problem for us. Second of all, any prior engagements that have been made public will likely be permitted, since those are so important to silly Pureblood families and over half the wizards on this council are Pureblood. That explains all the engagements recently...”

“I’ll admit it’s not ideal but I guess if it’s a last resort, announcing a public engagement wouldn’t be too far fetched, would it? It isn’t like we’d have to stay engaged, right?” He looked to the kitchen before lowering his voice and moving closer to Hermione. “And Ginny and I already almost, well her match isn’t all that bad. But yours… Even if you and I were to… well...shite, where the hell is Ron, anyway? He’d be pretty damn useful in this whole ordeal.”

Hermione simply shook her head, a sad smile on her lips. She paused for a moment before asking, hesitantly, about the date of this meeting. Harry looked down at his pile of papers and sifted through them before pulling one out. “About a fortnight ago. Why?”

She closed her eyes.

“Even if you and I were to all of a sudden decide we were madly in love, the process of announcing an engagement would take too long. Malfoy and Daphne’s sister must have been engaged for nearly half a year before it was made official in the Daily Prophet. There are protocols for this kind of thing. I suspect that maybe months ago when they made this decision, the important men in this room went home and immediately informed their families of this impending law and started arranging the engagements. It’s no use, Harry. But thank you. For offering, I mean.”

“There has to be something else in there, something that will get you out of this mess.”

“The only other valid excuse listed in here is medical. If there are any outstanding medical reasons to not marry, we’d have only another couple months to acquire it.” 

The look of determination Harry had become so used to during school didn’t even shadow her face. Only the look of cold defeat showed on her now brittle looking features. He moved to wrap his arms around her, just in time for a silent tremor to shake her.

When Ginny returned with a new tray of tea, she returned to Harry holding Hermione’s head on his lap, petting her hair and occasionally wiping away a tear that had managed to free itself of her guarded demeanor.

```

Ginny opened the door to the Burrow with her shoulders hung low. It had been a long day, mostly uninteresting and quiet. She was never a fan of absolute silence, but she found she much preferred it to the playlist Hermione had of the same ten songs on repeat. 

She took a breath and entered the home and was immediately met with the thunderous noise of her mother, father, brothers, and Fleurès annoying accent as they crowded around her, all asking questions and trying to ask them louder than the rest. 

“Stop it!” She yelled, directing them all to the living room. 

“Come on, Gin, this is a big deal. Tell us what’s going on,” George asked, or rather, George yelled.

“Who are you paired with, dear?” Molly asked, then, tears still wet on her cheeks when the group finally got her sitting down.

Ginny could nearly smile again. 

“Oliver Wood, thank Circe.”

“Oi, how did you get paired with him?” George yelled again.

Ginny rolled her eyes. 

“The ministry doesn’t want a complete upset. Most of the pairings I was able to find have been well matched, actually.”

She watched the confusion on their faces. 

“What do you mean by zat?” Fleur questioned, anxiously thinking of her younger sister Gabrielle, who had just recently moved to Scotland and had taken part in the census.

“A lot of the matches make sense. None of you even have to worry, actually. None of you are poorly matched, per se. Only George and I know our matches in person, but I was looking through the census collections at the other girls and they seem to be good people on paper. But as I said, I don’t think they’re all that bad for the most part. Like Georgie-”

“So there’s no way to stop the law at all?” Bill asked. “No loopholes?”

Ginny shook her head just as Percy raised his voice to confidently state that “the minister is a brilliant man and wouldn’t let any loopholes fall through in such a huge law,” to which George smacked him over the head. 

“Shut up, I’m trying to hear my fiance’s name! So what about me, Gin? Who will I be marrying?” George asked hopefully.

Ginny watched them all and realized that only Molly was still crying. 

“Lucky boy that you are, now you’ve got the perfect opportunity to propose to Roxanne before you ever even have to ask her out for a first date.” Ginny laughed as she spoke when George’s jaw dropped.

“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” He asked, excitement pumping through him.

“You’re marrying Roxanne!” She squealed, and she felt like she were a child again and all was well.

“How on Earth did George get her?” Percy scoffed. “Has the ministry been watching him pine away after all this time?”

“Like I told you. The ministry probably doesn’t want a big upset. I’d imagine that they’ll want to keep as many of their ‘war heroes’ and public figures happy with their matches, just to avoid the whole public dissension part of it all.”

“So the matches aren’t bad then?”

Ginny grimaced. 

“A couple of them are bad, but-’”

“But that doesn’t mean that we’ll be anywhere near the rough ones, right Molly? You can breathe, dear. You can calm down.”

Ginny looked down. She didn’t know how to tell her mother, her already panicked mother, that the girl she considers another daughter is paired to the man that is commonly known to have killed her two brothers during the first war against Voldemort. 

Molly shook her head at Arthur, though. 

“No, it’s not okay. I can’t calm down because something is wrong here. Ginny, dear, what’s wrong? What is it?”

Ginny sniffled and covered her face with her arm to wipe away the tears as subtly as she could. She didn’t want them to see her like this. Especially not when the last time she’d cried to them was about the breakup, and she didn’t want them to think that she was jealous of Harry’s match, or that it was anything to do with Harry at all. She didn’t even want to think about Harry in the first place or the thought of him marrying anybody but herself. For all her relief at having being paired with Oliver Wood, she still hardly knew him. She didn’t know the man, and it felt like a pit in her stomach to be paired with someone she knew and someone she could see herself being with. But Harry didn’t know his match at all. And Hermione…

“Ginny?” Charlie asked, gently pulling her sleeve.

She sniffed again and held her head up.

“It’s, uh. Huh. Well… It’s Hermione…”

Ginny cried as she spoke. She told them about Dolohov, and she told them about Harry’s face when he talked about it. She told them about how she had to leave from the room and cast a silencing charm in the bathroom so she could cry and throw up and mourn the future of her best friend, of her almost-sister-in-law. 

And Molly cried for her children, for the children she felt were hers and for the children she would bring into the family though some won’t be coming willingly or happily. She cried for the grandchildren who would grow up with parents who weren’t in love.

And Ron… Ron wouldn’t get to marry the girl he’d been in love with for so long…

It’s true, Molly thought, that they bickered an awful lot. But they were like an old married couple. Their arguments were about such trivial things, such insanely unimportant things like laundry and tardiness and organization. She knew they enjoyed one another’s presence, she knew they enjoyed one another’s personalities. It was only the small stuff that got to them, and those were easy enough to overcome.

Molly shook her head. 

It wasn’t fair that they’d never get to learn how to overcome their problems.

And what did Fred even die for if this is what was going to happen to them all? This wasnèt the change he was fighting for...

And as much as Molly didn’t want to admit it to anybody in the family, she stayed up that night staring at the fire knitting nothing in particular and wondered if Hermione would be happier dead than bound to a monster like Dolohov.

She didn’t want to think of the young girl that way. She was still so young with so much life ahead of her.

But it was Dolohov, and Molly knew that if she ever woke up to the news that Hermione had taken her own life, she would much prefer it to the news that she’d been murdered. 

And when she was climbing the stairs to her bedroom she realized that from now until the rest of her life, she would never be surprised to hear that the young toothy girl that stayed over for summers and some holidays had died.

And she fell asleep terrified and crying that she might someday soon be burying such a sweet girl…

So sweet, so loving, she fit so well into the family and Arthur woke up to her shaking and wrapped his arms around her and they both cried together for their family.

For their children.

For their futures. 

And they woke up with her pressed up against him and she held him close to her and counted every blessing she ever had that she got to choose Arthur. She would still choose him, just like she knew Ron and Hermione would choose each other, and then she was crying again. 

But she had to get up, she could hear her children congregating in the kitchen.

They were all worn out and tired from yesterday - last night wasn’t easy for any of them and now it felt like every move they made or saw was robotic and not even their own. They were going through the motions, and it was painfully obvious to each of them that seemed to be allowing themselves to move in such a way.

Percy sat stiffly at the table with his plate of eggs that had long since gone cold

George stood against the wall and was leaning against it uncomfortably. 

Arthur patted Bill on the shoulders and sat down beside Percy and set his forearms down on the wooden table. It creaked slightly, just enough to let them know that one of the legs was too short or another was too long. George shifted on his feet as the table creaked again.

Moll sat down on the other end of the table and it did it again.

“Can somebody please just fix that already?” George nearly yelled, irritated. “All it needs is a little fixing. Just put a bloody nub on the end or something to keep it from-”

George shut his mouth.

Arthur looked up to his son in confusion. 

“George, I hardly think that now is the-”

“Stop talking for a moment,” George blurted out. 

 

“Are you alright?” Ginny took a step closer to him and put a hand on his arm. 

“I just- I… I was wondering… if by the ministry’s standards, would pregnancy count as a valid medical excuse?”

Molly's eyes narrowed. Percy looked up at him and opened his mouth, but said nothing. It was silent for all but a few seconds, but it felt like much longer. Ginny couldn’t quite be sure if time was even functioning in a linear pattern anymore by the silence and slowness of it all. But Molly didn’t hesitate. She jumped to the counter and called Errol through the window. 

“Mum?” Ginny asked, startled by her mother’s reaction.

Molly looked back to her daughter with a manic look on her face. 

“We need to get Ron back here now! We can stop this!” She squealed excitedly. 

The bird came and when the letter was attached and sent out Ginny still couldn't be sure what had happened. It was all too fast, too hurried, too rushed. She felt like she just couldn't catch up with the world around her. It was moving too quickly under her feet and she was somehow stuck just a few seconds behind everyone else, and she knew that others had it worse and others were farther behind, but she wasn’t sure how to process things anymore and it scared her.

So she did the only thing she knew was definitely the right thought in her head. 

She stood straight and left the door open behind her and despite the cold, she walked out wearing only her bathrobe, she didn’t even bother with sippers, and she went outside into the freshly fallen snow and apparated straight to the steps of Grimmauld place. She breathed a sigh of relief when the door swung open for her. At least she was still keyed into the wards. 

She entered at walked around.

“Harry?” She called. 

But there was no answer, so she called again.

She scrunched her nose and climbed the stairs. The bedroom was empty, she noticed when she got to the top. The bed was made, unslept in. She stood in his room, in this familiar room and stared at the bed she used to laugh in, that she used to wake up in, that she used to feel heaven in.

And it’s still empty no matter how many times she blinks.

She walks toward it and touches it lightly with her fingers. She can still smell him here, she noticed.

And then she thought of Oliver, and if he was standing in another girl’s bedroom right now or if he were in another girl’s bed. If he had a girlfriend, or if he had a boyfriend, and if he would hate her for ruining what they had. She wondered if he would ever love her if she wasn’t sure she could ever love him.

She sighed and stepped away from the bed, from the bedroom, from the stairs, from the whole house and apparated again to the loud metal stairs that led up to Hermione’s flat.

She let herself in without knocking and when she entered she paused in the living room to see Harry and Hermione sleeping on the couch just as she’d left them yesterday.

They’d moved just a bit to get more comfortable but Harry was sitting back on her couch with the fire lit next to them to keep them warm and Hermione was laid down with her head on his lap and his fingers in her hair and a hand on her waist and her hands entwined while she slept with her face towards his stomach it seemed to Ginny too much of an intimate scene for her to be intruding wearing a bathrobe and bare feet. Much too intimate for her to be there in the first place regardless of how she dressed, no matter how many times she’d worn exactly what she wore now when she’d been in Hermione’s position and waking up next to him.

So she picked up the dog-eared page with the circled medical section and left a bright pink sticky paper next to it.

And she left just the same way as she came; silent and numb.

And Harry woke up the same way.

He woke slowly to the silence and his legs were numb from Hermione’s head on his lap and he welcomed all of it because it meant that she was with him still. She wasn’t lost yet. 

He moved his left hand from her hair and his right from her waist and she stirred at the absence and groaned.

The light was far too light and the heat seemed to be far too much now.

She pushed herself from his lap and stretched.

Harry shuffled his hand through his hair and leaned forward to put his glasses onto the coffee table after wearing them all night, which was when the brand new bright pink sticky note grabbed his attention.

Hermione was a firm enforcer of using up every colour before moving on to the next, and Harry very specifically remembered her to still be using the yellow stickies. He frowned and pulled the paper over. 

“Did you do that?” Hermione asked, leaning over him to try to get a look at the scrawling that was far too neat to be his and far too large to be her own. 

“Oh,” Harry said, his face quickly turning red under his glasses as he read the note completely.

“Oh,” Hermione echoed, her face paling in opposition.

They sat in silence for a few minutes while working it out in their heads.

“Should-” Harry started, only to be interrupted by Hermione starting to speak at the same time.

“I know it’s- I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“No, go ahead, you first,” Harry offered, immediately thankful for the interruption.

“I was just going to say that this is a bit more intense than just a public engagement. A lot more intense actually,” she scoffed. “In fact a public engagement announcement seems quite tame compared to… to this.”

“Tell me about it.” Harry nodded, distracted until he caught Hermione looking at him expectantly. “Oh right. I was just going to ask if - if you wanted me to get Ron called back from his assignment?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smaller chapter today!  
> But that's okay! Because it is 12:12 am and that's got to be good luck!

It had been a week since they broke into Lord Greengrass’ office. One week since they found out about the Marriage Law. One week since they’d both been to work or even ventured outside their homes. One week since Hermione slept the night alone - there was usually someone with her now. Molly’s fears were unanimously echoed by each Weasley and when Ginny approached Harry with their concerns, he admitted that he was scared as well. He knew she was strong, stronger than himself, even. But he’d noticed a change in her that disturbed him. Long gone was the logical Hermione who could analyze anything; now she sat and read the same pages 50 times without making any progress. 

She kept seeing the words in front of her but she couldn’t make them sit still in their sentences. They didn’t make any sense anymore. How could these words, these perfectly rational words that under any other circumstance could sound like music to her ears, come together to form these sentences, these thoughts? And how could these words, these sentences, these thoughts have passed through Kingsley’s mind and made sense? And then how could all of these people, these perfectly rational people who were her superiors in almost every way except for their apparent morals and their blood, have looked at their children and decided that they would create a law forcing them into relationships that they’d never consent to?

There’s a reason, Hermione thought, that any appeals made would have to be made before the matches were released. It’s because they had to know that most of the people being subjected to the law would never choose the person they’ve been paired with. There’s a reason why they got their own kids out of the law. 

It’s unfair, it’s cruel and it’s barbaric and disgusting and it froze her mind and she wanted to kick and scream and walk into the ministry and kill every one of them but she couldn’t do anything, she couldn’t move or think or cry or kick or scream or walk into the ministry and kill them, she wished she could kick and scream and kill but her body was exhausted from sleepless nights of laying there and wondering which countries she could run away to. But then she remembered that she wouldn’t be able to help the other people who might suffer… who would be better off escaping with her...

So she sat and she stared at the fire and contemplated every way she could keep the law from being sworn in. She wished she had the power, the strength, to stride into Kingsley’s office and hold a dagger to his throat, hold a dagger because she was proud to be a muggleborn and knew how much fear a knife could inflict and she wanted Kingsley to feel her kind of fear, her kind of pain. She wanted him to beg her to let him go so he could shut the whole thing down. 

She wanted to find Malfoy and hurl him against a wrought-iron fence and watch it push through his chest and she’d fucking cry because rational people, good people, feel real emotion when they sentence another person to death, to pain, to fear and as much as she hated it, Malfoy was real and she was real and she’d kill him and she’d cry and then she’d be killed and… and nothing good will have come from her doing it, would it? It would be just as bad as running away. It’s really just a different place to run to, after all.

And that didn’t make her feel any better. It didn’t make her feel good, fine, okay, anything on the spectrum of relief at escaping Dolohov. 

 

“Harry,” she spoke louder than she’d intended and she found the sound resonating in her ears. “Do you remember that job you were telling me about a few weeks ago?” 

She shuddered at the chill that bit at her spine and suddenly prayed that he’d been too wrapped up in his reading to have heard her. It was a stupid thought… 

But he heard her and looked up inquisitively. 

“From the basement division?” He squinted at her, having long ago removed his glasses so he could try to get some rest before getting up to make them dinner. 

Hermione hummed in affirmation, unclear to anybody but Harry and Ron. 

“Yeah, what about it?” He asked, watching her features carefully.

“Who did you say was retiring?”

“Mirthwood, thank God. Should have left ages ago but he’s been there so long that nobody had the balls to tell him to bugger off. Not even Lord Greengrass tried… again, what about it?”

“You said that he’s kind of like a muggle divorce lawyer?”

Harry gave a lopsided frown. “Kind of, but not exactly. He’s pretty much in charge of marital law in the DMLE. It’s pretty boring down in there, but I expect it’ll get pretty hectic when-”

Harry closed his eyes. 

Of course. 

“Hermione… if this law is going to be passed, there’s no way they’re going to let you orchestrate divorces for everybody who isn’t happy with their match.”

“But marital law includes protecting spouses! Let’s say that Ginny and Oliver get married and he knocks her around. They’d been matched and something’s awry between them. Ginny should be able to seek help from the ministry, shouldn’t she? There’s no way they can reasonably justify ignoring abuse in relationships, there’s no way that looks good. They’ll start losing support and who knows what might happen then? Another war, perhaps? An uprising? A mutiny?”

“You can’t save everybody…” He said slowly, trying to force every word into her brain by staring her down.

“But maybe I can save a few. If I can help at least one person get through this, if I can protect them, why shouldn’t I try?”

Harry threw his papers on the ground in exasperation. “Because you’re the one that needs to be protected, ‘Mione! I’m supposed to be protecting YOU, not letting you go out and take on every trauma and every sadness that exists out the-”

“I don’t need to be protected, Mr. Auror, I am fully capable of-”

“No! You’re not!”

“Do not interrupt me!”

Harry closed his mouth and tried not to let himself fall victim to their pent up aggression. Heated words were heated words, they’d both learned the price of voicing them and regretting them later.

“Harry…” she started, putting a hand on her arm, just over her scar. “I’ve been through worse. There’s nothing Dolohov can do to me that I can’t survive.”

“But-”

“But nothing. Other people haven’t been through this before. I can help them, Harry. We haven’t found a single thing, not a single thread we can pull to unravel this.”

“How do they expect to get us all to go through with this though? Like you said, a riot could start. If we fight then-then… we can fight this like we did back when Voldemort...”

Hermione looked down. 

“The very fact that we haven’t found any hint of how they’ll be enforcing this is proof enough that there was another folder in Greengrass’ office that we missed. You know what that means, don’t you?” She glanced up at Harry and watched as his eyelids dropped and his head tilted back. He sat in the sun and she watched as it shone golden through his hair and made him look like an angel.

“If there’s another folder then there’s no way they’ve overlooked anything.”

Hermione nodded. 

“The very least we can do is figure out a way to protect the people subjected to it.” She sat still for a moment and watched as little bits of dust drifted through the air like little suns. She followed one as it swirled through the air and landed on the floor, and then it was gone… It was beautiful for a moment and then, in an instant, it was just plain dust and not a sun at all. 

“How will you get it? Mirthwood isn’t retired yet, and I doubt Greengrass will just hand you the job.”

“Why not? Nobody wants to work in that basement, it’s grimy and… and dusty. It’s so dusty down there…” Hermione thought of the floating golden dust flowing from one room to the other. She watched them carefully as they danced and narrowed her eyes when a few fell from rotation, dropped, and slipped towards the floor. And then they were just like the others - dirt, something needing to be cleaned. Like her, once upon a time. She was still a sun, still a star… but stars died sometimes and became nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all, nothing. Nothing but matter that expanded and pulsed and she didn’t care for astronomy at all, it was all too vague and unreliable, but she knew from studying muggle science books that everything she touched was because a star died once upon a time.

Hermione looked down at her hands and stretched them, curled them, felt them and knew that she had made up her mind. She would protect them. She would protect all of them. 

Harry squinted again and wished he’d put his glasses anywhere nearer to him earlier.

“Considering the whole intent of this law, wouldn’t you assume they’ll be hiring someone they can trust to uphold their decisions?” Harry asked, snapping Hermione from her reverie. 

Hermione looked up at him. “Mirthwood doesn’t know anything, won’t know not to hire me. I have the credentials, the recommendations. I fought in the bloody war that saved his life. If he hires me, if Kingsley signs off on it, then the job is mine and I can at least do something about all of this.”

Harry shook his head as if he were stuck in a dream. Or rather, stuck in a nightmare. 

“If Kingsley signs off on it? Hermione, he’s part of the problem now. Not part of the solution. We can’t trust him anymore.”

“I still don’t think he would willingly sentence us to this kind of future… it’s insane. Kings isn’t insane,” Hermione countered. “Besides. We need to see him anyway.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “That’s MY meeting with him. You’re not invited.”

“Why not.”

“Because I don’t trust you not to stroll in there and tell Kingsley everything we know and blow our entire position on this.”

“You know I won’t do that-”

“You’re hell-bent for leather that he’s been trying to send you secret messages,” Harry narrowed his eyes at her and shrugged. Sure, she was brilliant. Sure, she was the best goddamn witch, wizard, whatever you want to call it, she was the best he’d ever met. But she also thought too well of people sometimes. 

Namely, she thought too well of a particular person at this particular moment and it wasn’t a reliable witch before him at this point.

But he heard a crackle, a pop, a sizzling and before him suddenly sat a livewire. He ducked his head down and ran his hands through his hair.

“I won’t allow this.,” she said plainly. “If you’re going to see him, so am I.”

Harry looked up to argue again but the look on her face made him shudder. 

There she was, he sighed. 

As much as he didn’t want her to go, she had hope again. She had fight. She had drive. 

He wouldn’t be the one to step on it now. Not while he still believed there was hope to be had and a fight still to fight.

And she was back, maybe. 

And he’d do anything for her to stay back.

 

`````

 

“Minister,” Harry greeted Kingsley in his office with a smile. He shook his hand and moved swiftly and if anybody were to see the three of them together, they would see two men behaving very normally and one woman acting a bit jumpier than usual.

Despite her insistence on accompanying him and being capable of doing so, she found that was still rather exhausted. She’d taken a potion to help her sleep and in the morning, when she was still tired and groggy, Harry had rolled his eyes and tossed her a Pepper Up potion from his duffel bag.

“Harry, Hermione, what a pleasure to see you both!” Kingsley laughed as he gestured to the chairs in front of his desk while he walked around to sit in his. “I’ll be honest, I was very surprised when I saw we had a meeting today. So says the gossip in this ministry, you both have been quite ill after catching a muggle sickness that targets single men.”

Kingsley turned to stare at Hermione, and she couldn’t be sure if the twinkle in his eyes was that of suspicion or gest. 

“I was sick, Kings,” Hermione flushed. “Harry was just trying to help.”

Harry balked. That was not their story. He glanced over to her, and it only took meeting her eyes for a fraction of a second to understand her intentions. Hermione always did like to plan ahead, loved good foreshadowing in all of her books, and Harry had to admit that planting the seed now would make it easier for her later.

Kingsley leaned over his desk and offered her a hand. She stared at it for a while before slipping her small hand into his.

“Then why a muggle illness targeting single men? That seems to be a bit far fetched, a bit dramatic, doesn’t it?”

Harry laughed and pulled it from deep down in his chest. It didn’t matter that he didn’t feel like laughing, he just wanted to draw the attention to himself in the moment. Away from his flustered friend.

“Don’t push her Kings, she’s been so embarrassed about everything already. Must be the hormones, right?” Harry smiled as he spoke, trying to maintain as much eye contact as he could without seeming uncomfortable or odd. But then he wondered how much looked normal and he blinked and looked around a few times.

Kingsley looked between them and frowned a bit, but apparently decided not to comment. 

“So what are we talking about today? Must be important if the DMLE had you slipped in so urgently.”

Harry shifted in his chair. 

“Well,” he started. “To be short, Ron’s missing.”

Kingsley cocked his head a bit. 

“What do you mean by that?”

“He left on an assignment last week and nobody’s heard from him since.”

Kingsley leaned back in his chair.

“Harry already sent out our available auror department to go look for him, but nobody’s been able to find him yet. They’ve gone everywhere he was supposed to be, everywhere he could possibly get lost, but he’s not there.” Hermione interjected, still looking flushed. Her voice wavered a bit, wobbled just slightly. “I-we, I mean… Would you be able to have the International Magical Office of Law investigate? Or at least have them contact the auror departments we have confirmation he’s been in? It’s just, it’s really urgent that we find him. It’s really urgent that he comes home.”

Hermione looked down to her hands and twiddled with her thumbs to keep from meeting Kingsley’s eyes directly. 

Harry watched as Kingsley regarded her carefully, speculatively. He watched with intensity at her hands, and where they rested just beside…

“Hermione... “ Kingsley started, his eyes getting red and Harry’s heart started to beat faster. “I know you must be very worried about Ronald. Of course, I’ll arrange for him to be found and brought home as soon as humanly possible.”

He let go of his breath and let his head fall forward just a smidge. 

“Thank you,” she responded quietly before taking a breath. 

“I’ll send a message down to the DIMC at once.” Kingsley smiled and then turned his gaze from her. “Harry, would you be able to run the message down to them for me? You’ll be needed there to give details regarding his mission and disappearance, but that’s all old hat. You’ve done this plenty of times.”

Harry nodded tightly as the minister scribbled down a message for the DIMC.

“Yes, of course, Kings. Thanks for helping out so quickly.” Harry smiled at him and stood when the note was finished and signed and shook Kingsley’s hand. 

Hermione stood to follow but stopped when Kingsley raised his hand. “Hermione, stay a bit, would you? I have some follow-up questions about our meeting last week.”

“Oh,” she started, “I’m not sure if there’s time for-”

“Nonsense. It’ll only be a moment. Please,” he said, gesturing back to her chair. “Sit.”

Harry widened his eyes at her, trying to get her to protest. But she didn’t, and Harry knew immediately what she intended to do. 

He opened his mouth to speak again, but Kingsley lifted a finger and the note started to squirm in his hands and snapped to bite him. He nearly dropped it in surprise, and when he looked up he found himself solidly planted outside Kingsley’s office and he frowned, having no recollection of moving himself.

The note squirmed again and Harry took a deep breath and prayed that Hermione protected both of them by not blowing their cover.

And he walked down the hallways, nearly ran just so he could run back and meet her when she left her meeting and it was an unnervingly slower process than he truly wanted it to be. He growled in frustration every time the crowd around him stalled and slowed him down on his way and then he steadied himself not to throw things when he was held in a queue to even enter to DIMC and then he was asked to pull a number and wait his turn and he couldn’t stop grinding his teeth and tapping his foot against the cold floors before he was finally called up and he was breathless and then he was pointed down the hall and then another hall and another room, "our expertise is dedicated to different matters here," and he saw a wastebasket in the corner in the corner of the room he now sat in, waited in, and tapped his foot again and stared at the wastebasket and tried to see if he could tip it over with his mind. 

Harry took a deep breath and turned from the wastebasket to the long counter that separated the employees from the disgruntled people by a heavy ward that they sat comfortably behind. He could see beyond it two women chatting with each other. They laughed and despite the obviously crowded waiting room, only one person manned the entire desk.

“Excuse me,” he spoke up, getting the attention of the tall blonde woman behind the counter. “I’ve got an urgent message from the minister that really ought to be dealt with.”

She looked up at him and blinked lazily. 

“It’s always urgent,” she said in a French accent. “You’ll have to wait your turn just like everybody else.”

Harry stood and marched over to the counter and held the squirming note up. 

“I keep getting directed to sit and wait, but there’s a missing auror and the minister has given express orders to-”

“I am sorry, Mr. Potter, but many of the people in the waiting room are here on express orders from their own ministries. Do you consider your minister to be more important than any other?”

Harry leaned on the counter and rubbed his face with his hands before pushing himself back up.

“Listen, I am the Junior Chief of the Auror division of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and this is now an investigation. I’m going to have to insist you let me through or face the consequences of obstructing justice. What’s your name,“ he asked, taking out a pad of paper and a pen. “This is no way to treat a missing person investigation.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “My name is Charpentrier. Aline Charpentrier.”

Harry dropped the pen.

“Go ahead,” she continued and leaned back in her chair casually. “Convict me of doing my job. You say I am obstructing justice. But I could argue that you are interfering with International Magical Cooperation. Then you will be under investigation, and then you’ll have to come back and take another number and you’ll have to wait much longer to find your missing comrade.”

But Harry couldn’t quite focus on her words. Instead he watched as her mouth moved and he scrunched his nose and stared at her as she spoke as if she cared about nothing at all.

“My suggestion?” She continued. “Sit back down and wait your turn like everybody else. You’ll get what you want much faster, and without nearly so much hassle.”

Harry stepped back, not acknowedging her suggestion and vaguely heard someone who must have been standing behind him move to the front of the line. 

“Excuse me,” the man asked angrily. “I really don’t have time to be waiting. I have very important business with the German Ministry and it needs to be taken care of at once.”

“It’s always important,” Aline responded to him in the same tone she’d answered Harry in. “You’ll have to wait your turn just like everybody else.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pls bear with Hermy-one, she is very confused and dealing with a lot of shit  
> Also are we finally gETttIN SOmEwHErE??
> 
> Sidenote, what's your hot take on Kings?

“Kings!” Hermione protested as Harry suddenly stood somewhere beyond the doors. She hadn’t even seen him move, but he was gone and she hadn’t even blinked.

“A new security measure,” he explained without looking at her. “Brand new as of last week.”

He looked up to her and his eyes twinkled. Hermione shivered, remembering how Dumbledore’s eyes did just the same thing when he was trying to get his way.

“What about Harry just then made you consider him a security threat?” She asked through gritted teeth.

Kingsley looked at her inquisitively, then, and laughed. “Nothing, of course. I’ve just been so excited to use it. It’s a wonderful bit of magic, don’t you agree?”

Hermione shook her head. “I haven’t had the chance to examine it. But I find it extremely rude to dismiss him while he was still speaking to -”

Kingsley waved her off with a hand and she closed her mouth.

“You’re not as good at lying as you used to be, Hermione,” he said quietly, lifting his arms onto the table and staring at her pointedly.

Hermione straightened under his gaze and felt the pattering of her heart under her chest and she tightened her hands around the arms of her chair in an attempt to still her insides but they moved despite it all.

“What do you mean by that?” She asked, willing her voice to keep steady.

Kingsley maintained eye contact as he raised his wand. Hermione took a deep breath, sucked it in quickly.

“You know more than you’re letting on,” he replied. “There’s no need for modesty, Hermione.”

Hermione squinted her eyes at him.

“Excuse me?”

“That bit of magic? Why would you lie about it when you know I know full-well that you played quite a part in it being discovered?”

“I-I’m not following.” Hermione let out a deep sigh of relief as Kings placed his wand on the desk and laid his clasped hands beside it.

“Your research on the stray sods, of course!” Kingsley laughed as he referenced one of her published papers on the species. “Entirely brilliant. It was your department that funded the project, don’t you remember?”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t been aware of any funding pertaining to her work on the stray sods. Her funding bracket was so small as it stood that she could hardly afford to maintain her entire staff.

“I’m so sorry for my memory lapse here,” she started, “but could you remind me of what exactly you are referring to?”

Kingsley smiled warmly. “I’m surprised at you! Perhaps that illness you spoke of really has been messing with you. I remember very clearly speaking with you about your work on the sods after-”

“After the Camberman versus Degois trail,” Hermione finished for him. “But we spoke then only about how my team had identified that the stray sods were, indeed, creatures and ought to be classified under the protection and preservation laws. I have no such memory of any research into manipulating their magic and profiteering from it, let alone the funding of such a project.”

Kingsley frowned and averted his gaze for a moment.

“Nevertheless,” Hermione continued. “No matter the magic you have, it’s irresponsible to test it out on your friends without asking permission. It’s called common courtesy, Kings.”

“You seem very on edge today, Hermione, is anything bothering you?”

Hermione’s eyes widened as she tightened her fists at her sides.

“You… you can’t be serious?” She sputtered, raising her voice. “It hasn’t been ten minutes since we spoke of Ron missing and-”

“Oh dear,” Kingsley’s face dropped, and Hermione found herself feeling guilty about yelling. 

“Please, you must forgive me. There has been so much on my plate recently and I fear you have just suffered the consequences of my being Minister. I’m sure you understand, though, being so involved and invested in your work...”

Hermione grimaced. There sure were consequences, and it seemed that sacrificing his friends now appeared to be one of the consequences he'd be suffering very soon.

“Actually, Kings, I’ve been thinking…” she found herself suddenly sputtering, despite her better judgment. She'd wanted to do it more subtly and over a longer period of time so as to not look suspicious, but her mouth wouldn't stop speaking. “I’m starting to feel as if I might need to take a step back from the DRCMC-”

Kingsley's jaw dropped in surprise.

“Excuse me?” He balked. “But you’ve worked so hard to get to where you are there and-”

“When it comes down to it, I feel as if my strengths might be better utilized elsewhere.”

“And where might that be? This is very unusual, Hermione, I really must say that I’m not sure if I can support your decision to leave your Department.”

“It’s just- Kings, you’ve got to understand. This position is everything I thought I wanted, and I’ve loved working there, but it’s time for me to make a move elsewhere.”

Hermione paused for a moment and thought out her options. She knew just how strange it looked for her to be saying such things now, without there having been any warning. It looked rash, like she’d just opened a secret door to the secret doings of a secret government and read every bit of secret paperwork there was to be had about it.

She bit at her lip. She needed Kingsley to need her to stay. She needed him to want to give her Mirthwood’s job.

“I’ve been thinking…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been considering leaving the ministry to pursue an education in America. I’ve already been accepted to a fairly prestigious school, and I’m-”

“Hermione-”

“I’d still be willing to offer my expertise to whoever is chosen to fulfill my position if that’s your concern? I was hoping to come to speak to you about approving my resignation sometime next month, and who I’d recommend you promote.”

Kingsley’s large hands rubbed at his eyes before looking up at her with bleary eyes.

“This is all too sudden. I can’t make any decisions about this right now.”

“Kings,” Hermione spoke condescendingly, her lungs wound and tied and constricted. “Are you considering not letting me leave?”

She already knew he wouldn't, but she needed to hear him say it.

She peered at him as she studied his movements, his facial tics and the subtle cues she’d spent the better part of five years learning. She already knew he had no intention of letting her leave, and he hadn’t confided in her about the marriage law. He hadn’t told her about the barbaric decision to force her into a marriage with a murderer. Not just any murderer either, a murderer who had tried to kill her specifically, and on more than one occasion.

She knew she couldn’t just leave, and she knew Kingsley couldn’t let her try. There had to be ways that the council, that Kingsley and Greengrass and Malfoy and all the lot, there had to be a way to guarantee that people fall in line and obey. It’s why she refused to run. It’s why she refused to just end the terror and confusion by simply decomposing where she sat, or stood, or lay. And something about the stray sods and the charm developed from her own research made her uneasy enough to both give up entirely and rage into a new investigation. Her own research - weaponized - without her knowledge or consent.

She wondered what else they’d taken and weaponized without permission.

Or what else they’d taken at all. Something they’d simply manipulated… Something that people gave willingly… Something that they’d had no reason to not give, even though saliva and hair samples really were odd to ask for.

Hermione could deduce that the DNA was used to help guarantee clean matches; accidental inbreeding could be entirely eliminated.

But was there more? Could there be more?

Hermione breathed deeply. Harry was right. No matter how much she’d trusted Kingsley in the past, he knew at this very moment as he sat across from her discussing funding for a project she hadn’t signed off on and career moves, that in just a few short months she’d be sworn to a man who’d tried to kill her several times. Kingsley knew, and that fact made her blood boil, and it was all she could do to suddenly not bolt upright and hold her want to his throat. She’d wanted to do it muggle-style, hold a knife or something sharp, but a wand would do.

A wand could do enough damage.

She had the scarring across her torso to prove it.

But she also had the deep scarring on her forearm that proved that muggles knew torture too.

Hermione closed her eyes.

She wasn’t bad. She wouldn’t hurt her friend. Especially not when she didn’t know yet his plans. The law wasn’t yet revealed; perhaps he had something up his sleeve. Perhaps there was something - anything - that could point to him being on her side still.

Still an ally.

Still a friend.

Still the man she’d cried to when Harry was injured on the hunt for a rogue wizard. Still the man she trusted to find Ron. Still the man she trusted despite knowing what she knew.

But there was a simple question she could ask and a simple response he could give that would make up her mind for her; that would decide for her once and for all that either she trusted him, or she hated him.

“Kingsley,” she started, a stray flicker of emotion bubbling up from under her voice, “there’s something I need to ask you and-”

“I know what you’re about to ask me, Hermione,” Kingsley said, his voice low. He looked up to meet her eyes and widened them slightly, just enough to silence her. Hermione felt it tight in her chest and stared back, her heart beginning to pick up.

And then his demeanor changed, and he was smiling to her and leaning back in his chair.

“I’m sorry,” he spoke, his voice light and jovial. “I just can’t approve you leaving at this time. You have to understand… it’s so busy, and with so many people retiring this year, I can’t spare someone as detrimental to the system as you.”

Her stomach ached at the confusion of everything.

“Kings…”

“I can’t permit you to leave,” he said sternly, with a frown on his face. “But perhaps I could be of some help. What about your position is bothering you?”

Hermione sighed and tried not to let the defeated sagging in her shoulders drag her down, despite the disappointment she felt in her bones about Kingsley’s apparent … unwillingness ...to let her escape the law. It seemed cruel of him to try to help, considering he was still setting her up for murder in her own home.

He’d failed without even having the question being asked; he refused to help her. Knowing what he knew, she’d expect him to be siphoning off messages to the people that he cared about to try to save them.

If he didn’t care enough to bargain with her in particular, that was one thing. And perhaps he’d already put in his bargaining chip for Harry, whose match seemed almost good from what Hermione could tell, though that could very well be due to politics. Matching the Boy Who Lived with a former Death Eater would raise every alarm. Perhaps Kingsley had saved Harry and perhaps he'd had nothing to do with that at all.

She took a deep breath and realized that she hadn’t gotten herself anywhere. She still wanted to believe that he was fighting, even if he wasn’t able to fight for her anymore.

“I’ve told you about my cousin, Daria, yes?” She asked, smiling when Kingsley shook his head at the third-cousin she’d only met once before. “Well then, Daria is a family counselor. She’s found great peace in bringing love to marriages, and helping families find peace and happiness together. The DRCMC is amazing, but I’ve been fighting through so much division and politics to be able to make any headway, especially as a muggleborn, and I think I’d like to give bringing people together a try. I’ve been quite interested in perhaps shifting into that line of work and-”

“Hermione, you might just have the best luck of anyone I’ve ever met,” Kingsley nearly burst, making Hermione flinch. “I might be able to help you with your conundrum. As I’m sure you’re aware, the Ministry does have a department for exactly the kind of work you’re wanting to look into. Now, I can’t guarantee the position, but I can look into it for you if you’d like?”

Hermione looked down and pursed her lips, playing coy.

“I know what department you speak of, but I’m afraid that it’s far too outdated for my liking. Mirthwood’s so old,” she explained, “and if I were to enter his department, I’d be working under someone who doesn’t have the capacity to change. I’d want to revamp the entire system, make it more efficient and functional. We’re moving into the future, Kings. I really feel like I need to be on top of it, not answering to other people.”

Kingsley frowned.

“I can’t promise you anything yet, Hermione, but I’d like to ask you to please hold off on your resignation for just a few months?”

She bit her lip. “As I said, I was considering holding off for about a month, but no more than that”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he resolved and took a deep breath. “Now, I had some questions that you might be able to answer. I took a look at the proposal you had Dennis bring to me and I’m fairly certain that the prospected budget is far too small. Like with Villa Luna, you’re trying to appeal to the Wizengamot, which is fantastic, but it’s limiting your abilities to actually do any good. Half of the problems we faced with Villa Luna are still due to insufficient funds, which could have been entirely avoided by taking into consideration that plans don’t always work out how you imagine they will. Perfect execution is impossible; it would be stupid to believe that so many independent variants can be controlled exactly to our liking without investing the proper money.”

Hermione’s brows furrowed. 

“So what you’re telling me is to look at the numbers?”

Kingsley nodded. “Funding can never be overlooked.”

 

````````````````

Hermione apparated to the steps of her flat and pushed open the door, leaving it hanging open as she rushed through. Every paper still sat in their appropriate files and Hermione was vaguely aware, suddenly, of the feeling of loneliness. How long had it been since she’d actually been alone?

She squinted at one of the stacks of papers that she’d gone through a few days before and started peeling the pages from the top until she got to the financial statements. 

Kingsley was right, she breathed over the statements. Funding can never be overlooked. 

She wished she could tear through them all and immediately know everything there was to know, but this was a slow process. Working through finances, though she was excellent with numbers, wasn’t her favourite thing to do by any means, and she found her eyes blurring as she read and reread pages over and over again.

But after an hour of diligent reading, Hermione closed her eyes and covered them with her hands, having found almost nothing at all.

How had she just read so much and learned so little?

She’d hoped to find something she’d missed the first time she went through it, and she was embarrassed to admit that she thought that this time around, she’d find something new. Something secret. Something hidden in there for only her to discover...

Why else would Kingsley tell her to look at the funding? Why would he widen his eyes at her in just the way Harry did? Why did he give off so many signals and why was she interpreting them to mean something they obviously didn’t?

He’s a liar, she fumed.

A prat. A bellend. An utter fool.

Someone she’d trusted. Someone she’d looked up to. 

She slammed her fist against the hardwood of the coffee table and swatted aggressively at the papers until they littered the floor and then she jumped up to kick at them. Her hands shot to her hair and pulled at the frizzing, she could feel electricity starting to buzz, and she just wanted to scream, but she couldn’t because Harry would be so worried, Harry would… 

Harry wasn’t here…

Hermione let out a ragged sound that she didn’t even know she was holding inside of herself and let herself fall against the wall beside her. Her heartbeat felt too fast and she gripped at her chest as tears started to pull themselves from her eyes as quickly as the sounds pulled themselves from her body, enough sounds to fill the days she hadn’t made any noises at all. And she found that her body had quite a lot to say, from the way it spoke when it was finally alone to hear itself speak. 

It gasped and it hurled and it ached and stabbed and she could feel every worry and every fear she had like pins and needles under her skin. 

She was scared for herself. She was scared for her future. She was scared for her friends, and for the friends who’d become family. She was scared for Harry, who didn’t know his future wife, and she was scared for Ron, who had no future at all if he wasn’t brought back. 

And then another sob tore through her. How careless she’d been - an awful girlfriend. She didn’t deserve him. In the whole time she’d spent panicking about this law, how much time had she really dedicated to thinking about him? Hardly any, and he wasn’t just gone on a business trip anymore; he was missing. He was actually missing, and there was a very good chance that she might never see him again. 

She slid down the wall until she was hugging her knees.

If he never came back, she wouldn’t ever scream at him again for incessant tardiness and constant prattling. She would never stay up crying because he’d made her feel guilty for something that seemed so unimportant when she actually thought about it. And she’d never get to stroke his silly red hair from his face in the morning, in the sunlight, in the glow of the dim telly she’d purchased just a year earlier. She’d never get to kiss him one last time.

She wasn’t even really sure when the last time she’d actually kissed had been. Before their fight, for sure. But when before? Had it been a kiss of affection? It hadn’t, had it… it had it been a kiss of obligation when he came around and kissed her while she cooked... Had she smiled? She couldn’t remember even stopping what she’d been doing. She couldn’t remember if she’d even looked at him for the second it had lasted. And then they’d fought about the same thing they’d fought about the week before, and a few weeks before that, and he’d left in such a huff that she’d barely slept at all that night.

Still, though...

“Please, Ron,” she whispered through her body’s frenzied panic, “please be safe…” 

`````````````

It was dark when Harry froze as he arrived back at Hermione’s flat and saw the door hanging open idly. The first thing he could truly think of was that he’d been gone for hours trying to get through to pass along the “urgent” plea to find Ron. He’d been gone so long, and he hadn’t been there when Hermione needed him.

He took a step toward the stairs and tried to calm the fluttering inside his stomach.

“Hermione?” He called out as he broached the door frame. “Are you in here?”

He could hear her sniffling before he could see her.

She moved quietly through her flat as she walked towards him, reaching back with her arms to massage her tense shoulders. She didn’t respond, instead choosing to walk straight up beside him and curl into him.

Harry shuffled uncomfortably for a moment before raising one of his arms to her waist.

Pulling her into a loose embrace, he heard her sniffle again.

“What happened after I left?” He asked, curious about her distress.

She scoffed.

“I don’t know what to do, Harry,” her voice whispered. “I think he’ll recommend me for Mirthwood’s job but-”

“Isn’t that precisely what you wanted?”

Hermione sniffled again. “It was, but that was before I found out that my research on the sods was taken without my knowledge and manipulated behind my back.” She let out a shaky breath. “Who knows what else is being manipulated? My papers on the centaur herds? My research on about a dozen previously unprotected magical species? There’s no way I can protect everybody I need to protect. One way or the other, things are going to go terribly wrong, and I- I don’t know what to do about any of it when I don’t know what kind of timeline I’m working with…”

Harry winced and kicked quietly with his foot to close the open door behind him.

“What do you mean by that?” He asked, gently moving her toward her living room, away from the chilled entryway.

“Come now, Harry, you know exactly what I mean. To actually do any good, I need to be realistic, and part of being realistic is knowing that people don’t usually get pregnant on their first try. The longer Ron is gone, the less chance I have of making anything work. And then what if he never comes back?”

Harry nodded. “I’ve been worrying about him too, but you can’t get ahead of yourself. The other ministries will be involved by morning, and they’ll find him. Last time he was gone this long, I went to Romania and found out he’d completed his mission days before and was hanging out with Charlie while he was getting paid time and a half, remember?”

Hermione almost laughed at the memory; of how mad Molly had been at Ron for trying to cheat money from the Auror’s office, and at Charlie for allowing it.

Hermione tried to smile, tried to laugh, but she couldn’t. “You’re right. He’s probably fine, but either way, I need to plan for the reality of things. If I play things right with Dolo-Dolohov, I might have, what, a few years? I’ve done the arithmancy calculations on it, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got between one and four years, considering there’s some leeway in marriage dates. Even if I get into Mirthwood’s position and force new legislation through that can protect people, or perhaps if I can make sure I have a hand in who gets the position after me… I know Dennis would do well after me in the DRCMC. He’s got a good solid head on his shoulders and he’s up to his ears in compassion, but he’d need someone equally as smart and empathetic to work with him if he’s going to get anywhere in that council. I was thinking that Neville might be a good person to ring about that… He’s wonderful… I really ought to make sure he knows how truly wonderful he really is... I’ve got a lot to work through,” she said and paused, her voice scratching at her throat and her fingers shaking. “If you don’t mind, I think I might need some alone-time tonight to really hammer out these plans…”

Harry shook his head sharply. “Not a chance. We’ll figure this out together, ‘Mione. Walk me through this, I’ll help you however I can.”

“I think that the council’s found a way to turn our saliva and hair samples into some kind of leash and shock collar.” She spoke robotically and Harry gingerly pulled her to sit on the couch. “I’m not entirely sure, but it’s the only way I think they’d be able to control so many of us. So we can’t run away, and we can’t riot. There aren’t any loopholes we can abuse to tear apart the legislation and Kingsley… I don’t know if we can trust him. I think he’s still on our side, I still get that feeling, but-”

“But you’ve got to be realistic about things?”

Hermione closed her eyes and a tear fell through them as she nodded shallowly.

“I need to plan,” she said after a moment and tried to heave her body up from the couch, but Harry looped his arm around her waist to hold her down.

She was surprisingly strong, though, and broke free of him and stood. Harry jumped to his feet as a spark in her hair told him that her energy was picking up radically, and with it, the chance of hysteria.

“Harry, please. You need to leave. I need to call Dennis and Neville and-”

Harry put his arms up, hands gripping her shoulders to stop her from pacing. “Hermione, stop for a moment, please.”

“And what?” She snapped at him, her face pinched as she pushed his arms away from her. “What good does stopping do me? What do I do now, huh? Where do I go from here?”

“Listen, I get it. You’re scared, but I’ll get you through this-”

“No, Harry, you can’t! You can’t promise anything! You tried, and I thank you for that, but if I want to continue my life here then I’ll just have to come to terms with marrying that monst- That man.” She stood up straighter, pushing her shoulders back. “We all have a part to play in this. It’s time we get used to it.”

Harry looked down at his hands, watching his fingers pick at each other absently as words refused to form.

“I know I can’t promise anything, but-” He paused, taking a deep breath, still not looking up to see her face. “But I can try. We can try.” He lifted his hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “Together.”

There was no speaking to alert him that he’d crossed a boundary, no palpable anger that he could feel; only silence. Perhaps minutes passed before he heard an unsteady inhalation, a shaky intake of breath that made him look up to see his best friend, Hermione Granger, nearly in tears. His instincts kicked in, quickly embracing her before he could remind himself that she could very well be furious with him, and Hermione was not the kind of person he’d like to tick off. But instead of pushing him away and hexing him for such an outrageous proposition, she just stood there and let herself be hugged by this boy, this friend who’d had saved her countless times… who had been there for her when no one else had, who had offered her near-constant love and companionship.

This incredibly kind boy, she thought to herself, this beautiful soul…

She pulled herself from him, dry faced and sturdy.

“You’re very kind, Harry, but-”

“But nothing. You’re my best friend. I’d do anything for you. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is included in ‘anything.’”

She looked at him anew… this was not just the boy who lived. This was a man who would risk… who would … She couldn’t quite put it into words. Here was a man who would actually do anything to save her, and her lips were quivering and she couldn’t find breath enough to even speak.

“What about Ginny?” She asked carefully, quietly, when she had the stomach to look him in the eyes.

“I already told Ginny. She’s known for a few days that if Ron didn’t come back that I'd step in for you”

“A few-”

“Well, I know you and Ron were kind of, well- I know I’m not him. But there isn’t much time. We’ve only got a couple of months left as you said, and if he comes back then that’s excellent. But it’s not as if you’ve got the time to just sit around hoping that he comes home incredibly potent.” She suppressed a snicker, to which an audible laugh escaped his lips. “What I’m mainly getting at is that we can try. We can try as hard we have to to get you out of this.”


	6. Chapter 6

It had only been a few days since he’d had offered to try to help her, and Hermione found herself absolutely incapable of rational thought. It seemed so impossible that she was in this position, and that he was in his and that he was still offering to stick his neck out onto the line to keep her safe. 

He’d actually offered to create a human with her, and she couldn’t wrap her head around that. She’d cried with him as he stood awkwardly and she knew he couldn’t promise anything, she knew it. But still, the very idea that she was now hoping to become pregnant by her best friend made her so weak in the knees that she found herself flushing and getting red whenever she thought of him. The thought of him inside her in any form, be it his actual body, something that came out of his actual body, or a living thing created from something that came out of his actual body, made her dizzy and she wasn’t certain if it was the good kind of dizzy or the bad, because she still had to sit own either way. 

And then she blushed because the living thing created from something that came out of his actual body was already tugging at her heartstrings; she was wholly unprepared for motherhood, probably wouldn’t be for a very long time, but the idea was thawing in her and it was almost… cute… that when she thought of the future, she wanted to see a small child with black hair in it.

And that in and of itself was so confusing for her that she, again, could hardly speak a rational sentence. It was so bad that she woke up two nights later in a panic, fearing that whatever string of words she’d said aloud to him when he’d made his offer didn’t make any sense. 

He didn’t have any such fears of what she’d said. He knew her and knew that she had a tendency to start mumbling nonsense when she got uncomfortable or nervous. He had to mute himself on their phone call for a minute when she rang him up the next day to mumble over the phone for almost a half hour before telling him that she accepted his offer, and she nearly cried when he laughed just out of the sheer embarrassment. 

“Well, I kinda figured you’d accepted when you didn’t hex me,” he’d pointed out. His voice was less buried, she noticed. Less… tense. 

It was … it still just… 

Hermione didn’t have words for all the feelings she felt; relief was there, and so was love. So much love for the people who’d built themselves up around her - besides her. But there was terror too; terror that their plan wouldn’t work, or that it would but wouldn’t. Because she and Ron weren’t married, what if they walked into the ministry, announced their pregnancy, and then what if the ministry knocked them out, terminated the pregnancy, and obviated the whole thing from their heads? What then, if she’d actually gotten pregnant by Harry and it was dead because it wasn’t allowed and they’d been knowingly breaking the law? And what if the child was born healthy and happy to Hermione and Ron, who were allowed to stay together for the sake of their child? What would the dark-haired child ask when he was old enough to wonder why he looked an awful lot more like his uncle than his father? What happened if she dropped him when he was a baby? What happened if she banged his head on something, or if she didn’t respond to his cries fast enough one day and he internalized abandonment and resentment for her and grew up hating her? What happened if the very child that saved her life wished that she were dead some days? And what would happen if there was another war? What would happen if the child was ever in danger, too much danger for Hermione to protect it from? What would happen if the child grew up and received a letter that the ministry had used saliva and hair samples to determine a match, and she had to watch her child go through precisely what she was going through now? What would happen then? 

What would… what would she do?

What could she do?

 

```````````````````````````````````````````

 

“What about in vitro?” Hermione asked, laying down on her bed beside Ginny. 

“Nope,” Ginny shook her head. “That involves mediwitches, and there’s no way in hell they’ll be able to help you. I bet all fertility attempts like that have been suspended for now, don’t you reckon?”

Hermione grumbled. 

“What about insemination, then?”

Ginny groaned and turned to heave herself up on her elbows. 

“And what, use a turkey baster like in those movies?” she asked, looking at Hermione dryly. “We’ve been over this already, ‘Mione. You already know what the best option here is.”

“Best,” Hermione laughed. “Does it not seem surreal that a two weeks ago, if you’d told me that I’d be lying in my bed wondering how best to get impregnated by Harry, I’d have choked on my own saliva and hacked out a lung?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” Ginny laughed. “There are a lot of guys out there worse to have a child with. For example-”

“Cormac McLaggen?”

“Merlin, no! I was thinking about some of the dreadful Slytherins, I hadn’t even considered the dreadful Gryffindors! I change my answer. There are Cormac’s in the world, be grateful he’s not your sole shot at freedom.”

Hermione smiled and laughed alongside her friend, who’d proven herself to be much more adept at girl-talk than Hermione had really given her credit for over the past few years. With her busy quidditch schedule, she was difficult to actually spend alone time with. Then there was the fact that she and Harry had broken up, and Ginny wasn’t so interested in spending time with the only girl who couldn’t be on her side in an argument. And then there was the bonus of Hermione dating Ginny’s brother, and neither wanted to really be sharing girl-talk when that hung in the air between them. 

“The Slytherins would be awful,” Hermione commented, her smile fading, her mind fleeting towards thoughts of a particular Slytherin who bore sole responsibility for the scars across her torso.

Ginny caught Hermione’s hand settle just over her ribcage and her jaw dropped. 

“‘Mione, I’m so sorry-” she stuttered, her eyes wide. “I don’t know why I said that, I was thinking of the prats we went to school with. Please, forget that I said that.”

Hermione looked toward her briefly and nodded, still with her hand ghosting over her shirt. 

“How about you tell me what I can expect over the next couple of months?” Hermione grimaced. “Do you have any pointers for me?”

“None that really stand out in particular,” Ginny jumped at the change in conversation. “He isn’t going to expect you to be kinky or anything; my only pointer would be to just remember that you don’t need to impress him. You aren’t doing this for him. You’re doing this for you, so go at whatever pace you need to go at.”

Hermione’s cheeks flushed.

“That might be a bit of a problem,” she confessed. “My pace is… how should I put this - not conducive to the timeframe we’re working with; in fact, I don’t even know if my timeframe ends at all.”

Ginny squinted at her, a hint of disbelief colouring her features. 

“Hermione…” she started, a smile tugging at her lips. “Don’t tell me…” 

Hermione groaned and covered her face with her sweatered arms. 

“Hermione! How on earth did I not know!? How on earth have you lasted so long without-”

“The first question is easier to answer,” she laughed. “Ron’s your brother, I didn’t expect you’d want to know! And I won’t get into any detail, but it’s never felt like it’s the right time. Ronald doesn’t exactly understand, he’s fairly vocal in his frustration over that and-”

“Let me guess; you want the moment to be right, and every time he questions your rationale, he mucks up any chance of the moment being right?”

“Exactly!” Hermione exclaimed. “I’m not expecting some grand fairytale deflowering, but I always hoped that it would feel right. I don’t want my first time to feel pressured, is that too much to ask for?”

Ginny scoffed. “Apparently it is. How wonky is it that the first time you actually do it will be when you’re trying to get pregnant to save you from marrying an absolute lunatic?” 

“Mortifying. I just accepted this proposition yesterday and-”

“Just accepted? Didn’t he ask you a few days ago?”

“I told you that my pacing is bad! I thought I had to call him to formally accept, I don’t know how to do this!”

“Wait,” Ginny laughed. “You called him to tell him that you consented to getting pregnant by him?”

Hermione covered her face with her hands. “I thought I needed to! I didn’t realize it was a given!”

“Jeez, ‘Mione. For someone so smart, you really can be awfully thick sometimes.” 

Hermione laughed and playfully shoved Ginny’s shoulders. 

“So,” Ginny started. “Is the day set? When does this all go down?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Tomorrow, I think. That’s why I needed your help today!”

“Right, right, right,” Ginny laughed. “So THAT’S why we spent four hours preparing fertility potions, I must have forgotten!”

Beside her, Hermione threw her hands into the air and let out a loud sigh. Ginny laughed at the exasperated sound of it and it took a few moments of it to realize that she could hear Hermione’s light laughter beside her. 

“And you’re sure I can’t just inseminate it myself?” Hermione asked, breathlessness dotting her question.

Ginny turned fully onto her side and clasped Hermione’s hands in her own. 

“I’d love to help you try out every possible option, but that could take years. So for now, we’re going to thank Circe that you’ve got such wonderful friends and perhaps you’ll consider making them some dinner because, Salazar’s Sandwitches, ‘Mione, I don’t know how you can go so long without thinking about food. I am starving!”

`````````````````

Ginny had barely opened her door when a loud popping noise erupted from behind her. She nearly screamed in the surprise of it all, but the quiet shuffling of feet was too familiar and the hair on the back of her neck immediately settled.

“What are you doing?” she asked, turning around to look upon him standing there in the dark - in the cold.

Harry knew Ginny well, and knew that she needed time to be alone and to think, he could tell by the way her shoulders curled forward as if trying to form a protective bulb around her heart, but he couldn’t help it. Ginny was smart, and he didn’t have enough people that knew everything about what they knew. Whatever happened between them was in the past, and he kept remarking over and over how well she seemed to be adjusting to everything. She was strong, and Harry was thankful to have her on his team again. His and Hermione’s team; the three of them. Possibly soon to be four, if Harry did his job right. Maybe the five of them, if Ron were also in the picture. If he stayed in the picture...

“Ron will hate me when he gets home, won’t he?” He’d asked Ginny as he sat on her floor, her on her bed, as Molly and Arthur busied themselves downstairs. 

Ginny pursed her lips. “He’ll have a lot more to hate if he gets home and it’s too late.”

Harry groaned and let his head fall back onto the bed frame. 

“Have you really still not heard from him?”

She shook her head. “I’d have told you as soon as I knew anything, you know that. Mum sent Charlie back to Romania to see if he’s stopped by there at all. But you said that Hermione thinks the saliva and hair samples were partially just a ruse to get our DNA? If she’s right about the shock collar and leash, then we shouldn’t be too worried. He’ll come back. He’ll have to.”

“Just not at the right time.”

“No,” Ginny mulled over her lip. “Not in time to get her out of the law. But we’ve got you to do that. The only reason I want him home right now is to know that he’s safe.”

“You don’t want him home for Hermione?”

Ginny tucked her chin under the mouth of her sweater. 

“She deserves someone who isn’t so… pushy, if you know what I mean.”

Harry squinted. “Vaguely. What do you mean by pushy?”

“Just that, well, you know. He can get a bit demanding with her and it’s awkward as hell to see him pulling his shit. I was over at her flat just before I got home and he came up in the conversation. Just briefly, but I don’t think he treats her as well as he should. He’s obviously my brother, though. I want the best for him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think he deserves the best.”

“Harsh,” Harry mumbled, removing his glasses for a bit. Just to clear his head, to dull the familiarity of the room around him. 

“Not quite so harsh when you’ve seen how they interact. Sure, they love each other. But you and I loved each other. That didn’t make us right for one another.”

“I-Gin, you’ve-”

“You don’t have to say anything. Don’t worry, I know it all already. I can deal with that. I’m just trying to focus on making the things in my life count. If I’m going to be married to Oliver, I might as well start it off on the right foot, right? Know where things went wrong with us and not have any reservations about falling in love again someday.”

“He’s a good man,” Harry interjected. “Really good. You’ll like him.”

“But will he like me, that’s the real question.”

“Of course he will, what’s not to like? You’re easy to love. He’s a lucky guy.”

Ginny smiled at him and, with an ‘almost’ of a tear in her eye, she blinked and watched the man sitting on the floor with his back to her.

“Hermione’s really lucky to have you, Harry,” she whispered. “You’ll make an excellent father.”

“The deal isn’t to be a father, Gin. It’s to be a sperm donor until Ron gets home. Everything after that is up to her.”

Ginny laughed and bit her lip, smiling, and sat up against the headboard. 

“Get up here,” she patted the newly empty space beside her. 

Harry twisted his head in confusion and looked warily toward the empty space on the bed. 

“I’m not sure if that’s such a good idea, I’m-”

“You prat,” she laughed. “Get up here and tell me everything you know about Oliver. I want to hear every detail.”

Harry rolled his eyes and put his glasses back on, squaring his back and hauling himself up onto the bed. 

“He’s driven as hell. Dedicated to his quidditch and to his career. You’re a lot alike in that respect,” he mumbled. “He’s nurturing, too. Took me into the team when I was only a first year, didn’t know anything about me but trusted in McGonagall when she told him to give me a shot. He could have put his team first and refused outright, but he’s trusting. I’m sure he’ll be furious, but he’s matched with you, and that’ll make it easier for him to get past the whole forced pairings part of it.”

“How nurturing can he really be when McGonagall almost had him kicked off the team for allowing you to get hurt? I also distinctly remember early mornings and long hours and I was only a kid at the time, but he seemed ruthless.”

Harry smiled. “As I said, he’s dedicated. And perhaps I should have rephrased that... he’s nurturing in the sense that he trained me right from the start and made sure I lived up to the potential that he and McGonagall saw in me. He may have let me get hurt to win a game, but he’d get hurt all the time to win games too. We weren’t on entirely different pages. And he’s loyal. He was at Hogwarts that day. He fought with us; helped carry the dead back to the castle, too....”

“I remember seeing him, but I hardly paid any attention. I was so focused on-” Her voice broke and Harry immediately paled. He knew her faltering like the back of his hand; whenever she thought of Fred she suddenly lost her voice and it … she… Harry nodded to her though looking in another direction, just to reassure her that he understood and that he was there; that he heard her.

“It was a busy day,” he continued for her, waiting for the telltale sniffle before speaking that meant she was ready to return to the conversation.

“Tomorrow will be busy too, I hear?” Ginny asked quietly, silently, almost mutely.

“You were just with her, how is she doing?” He asked, curious about Hermione’s state of mind and glad to be speaking about his only important reason for being there. He’d decided to leave her alone since their phone call. Give her some space. Let her have her own breathing room for a bit.

“She was laughing,” Ginny smiled. Harry’s eyes shot open.

“She was?” He asked, cautious to get his hopes up in case he’d misheard.

But he hadn’t 

“She made jokes, she giggled, she made me dinner-”

“So you think she’s good?”

“She’s better than I’d have expected. I think she’s just been so wound up for so long.”

“Do you have any pointers? For tomorrow?” He asked, looking down to twiddle his thumbs. 

“What is with you two and asking me for pointers?” Ginny let out a loud sigh with a smile. “Really, you two are best friends. You’ve known her forever, you don’t need my help.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Just give me one bit of advice and I’ll get back to talking about Oliver. Deal?” He leveled his eyes to her and raised his right hand, holding it out to her to shake in agreement.

Ginny eyed his outstretched hand and thought for a moment. 

“Be gentle with her,” she said, thoughtfully. She didn’t take his hand to shake it; she let it hang in the air and pretended she hadn’t seen it. Harry left it up for a few more seconds before awkwardly putting it down onto his lap. “She’s not fragile by any means, but she’s just… Go slowly. Let her control the pace of things a bit.”

“Slowly and gently,” he resolved. “I can do that.”

“Now,” Ginny smiled. “Back to Oliver… I’ve seen him make some really odd fashion choices in the past… please explain.”

 

`````````````````

Hermione fussed about the state of her flat for hours after waking up. In truth, she’d been awake for hours before she started cleaning the mess. But she couldn’t jump to cleaning it immediately; she needed to organize where everything would go. How it would all lay out. She couldn’t just put everything into the wastebasket and pretend it didn’t exist, despite wanting nothing but to do that.

It took hours of meticulous paperwork filing and piles to thoroughly clean her flat, and she couldn’t make it more organized if her life depended on it. There wasn’t a thing out of place, and that, in turn, made her all the more uncomfortable. It was all fine when she had other things to preoccupy herself with but now, with Harry to come to her flat at any moment, she felt the intensely queasy feeling return to her stomach. 

What if he changes his mind? 

She couldn’t imagine that he would, but then again, why wouldn’t he? She caught a glance of herself in the mirror and looked herself over, smoothing her hair back and brushing a few stray hairs from her dress. 

Ginny had, unceremoniously, informed her that a dress would work best if she was nervous about being seen. So long as she wasn’t wearing tights or shorts underneath, she could remain nearly entirely hidden from her best friend’s gaze. After this is all said and done, perhaps they could keep their friendship as normal as possible if he didn’t have to see all of her... 

Just then, a noise started to sputter from her living room, and she could hear the telltale sounds of the floo spitting someone out of itself. Harry stumbled out of her fireplace with a bottle of Firewhiskey in his hand just as Hermione ran to welcome him in, though it very much felt like it was just as much his flat nowadays as well. 

Hermione eyed the firewhiskey with a smile on her lips, to which he let out a chuckle in return. 

“I figured it might help us get a bit more comfortable with the whole situation…” Hermione smiled and left for the kitchen to grab a couple of cups. When she returned he was already on the couch, face red and fiddling with his glasses.

“Do not tell me you’ve broken your glasses again or so help me, Harry.”

He smiled up at her, taking the cups and filling them halfway. Hermione raised an eyebrow, earning a snicker from her best friend.

Nodding to each other with a smile, the two took their glasses and Harry had to suppress a giggle when Hermione gulped down the whole thing in one go and choked on the bitter taste of it. 

“Bastard,” she laughed, wiping her dress’ sleeve across her mouth. “You really skimped and got the cheap stuff, didn’t you?”

Harry laughed loudly, the noise filling up her living room. “It was the only unopened bottle I had!”

“Unopened because it tastes like polyjuice,” she joked, setting her glass on the table with a thud. 

“The good news,” he finished his own glass, “is that it tastes so awful because the alcohol content is higher than regular old firewhiskey.” He raised his eyes to her as he sat his glass down beside hers and grinned, pouring another couple fingers into the pair of glasses before him. 

Harry handed Hermione her cup and with another cheers, they each took a casual sip.

“Merlin,” Hermione whispered, “I needed that.”

Harry smiled. “Same. We should have done this days ago.”

Hermione nodded. 

“Harry,” she started, a bead of sweat popping up on her forehead as she looked down to her hands. “I just want to ask again, are you sure? About all of this?”

“Hermione,” he responded, rolling his eyes. “How many ways are there to say yes?”

“I just- have you thought this through? This is a big decision, one that you can’t take b-”

“And I won’t want to take it back. Even if it doesn’t work, at the very least we tried and gave it everything we had. This is something I can sacrifice for you.”

“But are you really prepared to stand by if this whole scheme works?”

“Of course. In my eyes, I couldn’t ask for a better mother for my child. You’re brilliant and kind-hearted and nosy, frustratingly-so, but you’re also fun, yeah?”

Hermione smiled and pushed at him playfully, but the concern was still there. How prepared was he to give his firstborn to be raised by other people?

“That’s very thoughtful of you, it really is. The intentions are lovely and I’m so honoured, but I’m scared that being Uncle Harry to your own child would be torturous and-”

“And again, I’m not making any decisions lightly. I’m fully aware that you and I can’t just storm the ministry and pretend we’ve fallen madly in love. There would be too much suspicion, and we’d have to participate in some long-winded conspiracy of our own that really just tears all of our allies from us. Trust me, ‘Mione. I’m thinking things through, I really am. I grew up with awful guardians. Seeing whatever kid this results in be raised by you and Ron would be a gift. Besides, it’s not like it would be my kid in the first place. I’m not getting my hopes up here that they’ll ring me up for quidditch lessons or that I’ll be invited to the birth. It’s not like I’m expecting it to feel easy and natural, not at first, but it’ll get there. It’s what I want, “Mione. I wouldn’t have offered if I couldn’t bear it.”

Hermione nodded and gulped, digesting his words, and tried to blink away the sudden images of Harry holding up a tiny inky-haired mess on a broomstick and hovering a couple feet off the ground.

“So you’re still, I don’t know, you’re still on board then?” She asked, accidentally biting her tongue on the question.

Harry shook his head and laughed, taking another sip from his glass. 

“Is there some other question you’re alluding to here, or are you just trying to stall? Because you know I’m awful with languages but I know where your dictionaries are and I’ll go look up ‘yes’ in as many languages as I need to before you get it into your thick skull that I’m-"

“H-Harry,” she interrupted, chewing her lip. “I don’t want to be annoying but… I just- uh, will it hurt? It’s just that I’ve never- well, you know. And I think I’ve been working myself up over this and-”

“You mean you and Ron-” Harry thought back to Ginny’s and his conversation and nodded in understanding.

“We’ve only kissed. It never felt right to do any more than that.”

“And what about now?” He asked, thinking of his very important task of being gentle and being paced.

“Well,” she started, “I suppose the fact that this is what I’ve chosen has helped me take the edge off. Also the firewhiskey, thank you for thinking of that. That’s definitely helping. It’s also nice that our entire relationship doesn’t hinge on this moment happening or not happening; and if I’m being completely honest, I’m glad it’ll be you.”

Harry nodded. “If it means anything to you, this isn’t something I’ll take on lightly. I know there’s an end goal to this, but I’ll do my best to make this special for you or-”

Hermione laughed, suddenly embarrassed. “I’m not needing candles and champagne, Harry. I don’t need the fancies of romance any more than you do, I’m perfectly happy with this god-awful firewhiskey.” 

She had spent so much of her friendship with Harry and Ron trying to fit in with them that oftentimes she felt they forgot she was a girl entirely. While she knew they knew she was a girl, it still felt like she was being seen as easier to deal with than a girl; something in the middle - neither here nor there. 

Ron laughed whenever she suggested a fancy meal, declared her suddenly high maintenance, and took her to a pub he liked that played muggle football on the telly. And Harry… well, she’d lived with Harry long enough on the run that they’d both effectively thrown out any notion of the other person as the opposite gender. They were simply friends, and this created a whole host of both problems and victories for her; on one hand, she presumed that returning back to regular sexless friendship would be smooth. On the other, what if… what if he couldn’t see her as enough of a girl to even participate in a sexual relationship with him, no matter how urgent and short-lived?

Harry looked at her with pointed eyes, and she felt all the blood in her body rush up to her face.

“You forget that I did not grow up with 5 brothers and am therefore not predisposed to see romance as a sign of vulnerability. You also seem to be forgetting that despite my lack of skill in wooing women, I am not a hopeless case.”

Hermione nodded to him, mouth shutting. 

Harry suddenly feared that perhaps she was trying to keep him at a distance.

“Listen, ‘Mione, if you’re worried that any romance will affect our friendship-”

Her face became bright red as if every blood vessel in her set up a neon sign. Not even an efficient neon sign either; the tacky cheap kind that flickered and caught on fire. The kind that strip clubs and psychics used.

“No! Not at all,” she stammered, “it’s just, nobody’s ever seen me that way before. What if you don’t like it, or heavens... What if I’m not good at anything? What if you can’t, I don’t know, what if you can’t get it up for me? You’ve seen me as a friend for so long, Merlin, I’m not sure if you could be attracted to me even drunk-” 

Harry blinked at her. 

Then he started laughing uncontrollably, and Hermione could feel pricks of tears and covered her face with her hands.

“Hermione,” Harry laughed, “Hermione, look at me.” 

Her hands reluctantly left her face.

“Listen to me,” he said sternly. “You are beautiful. You always have been, even when your hair is out to here and you haven’t slept in three weeks. And if you’re so concerned about me seeing you, then we have a perfectly functioning lamp right behind you that has the ability to turn off if you so choose. Not that you have any reason to be self-conscious. Trust me, you’re the kind of girl guys have… uh, dreams about. Which brings me to my next point: you are more than enough to, how do I put this… you’re more than enough to, you know... you know what I'm trying to say. To arouse me...” He could feel his face turning bright shades of pink and imagined that he looked unnatractively similar to a pygmy puff.

Hermione pulled the sleeves of her dress over her hands, balling them into fists. 

Harry raised a hand to her shoulder and remembered Ginny telling him to go slowly, gently, but as he looked at Hermione, he realized that Ginny didn’t know shit. 

Harry knew her better than anyone; except perhaps Ron. But Harry knew her in a different way than Ron did - Harry knew Hermione when she wasn’t trying to impress him, when he wasn’t trying to impress her. He knew her when she felt like a thousand mosquitoes biting at him and making him miserable, but like a thousand mosquitoes only if he was a bug lover and had some clinical condition prohibiting him from ever feeling annoyed. He knew her a hell of a lot better than Ginny did, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before inwardly cursing himself. Wasn’t he supposed to listen to Ginny? Wasn’t that the whole reason he’d gone over to see her yesterday? 

But he looked up and he could see that Hermione was overthinking things and would never make the first move in this situation. Yes, she was a lion. But she was the brain and he was the body, and they weren’t always this way but she was the thinker, she could think, she thought, she possessed ACTUAL THOUGHT and produced it on a REGULAR BASIS and he could only think about gnomes all of a sudden, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. They were clouding his brain and the next thing that came to mind were the freckles across her nose, just a light dusting, (you could hardly see them in the winter, but he knew them so well he could map them out with his eyes closed - was that strange for best friends?), and then he remembered how the last time they’d had a normal lunch together, he’d SLURPED HIS SOUP and ‘oh my god’, his face started to burn. His DNA would mix with hers and form a HUMAN and then that human would slurp and Hermione would make the same face she made at him when he did it and regret not waiting for Ron to come home, Ron didn’t slurp did he? Maybe he could pretend that Ron taught the kid how, but -

He lifted the paused and shaky hand to her face, softly stroking his thumb across her cheek.

Her skin was soft and dewy - almost glowing. Elastic. Youthful. Rosy from embarrassment and pale from refusing to go outside for so long. But she had nice skin, nice freckles, and it made him smile.

“Harry,” she started, eyes worried and voice uneven. “You don’t ha-”

Harry leaned in, pressing his lips against hers. She was still for a moment before, heaven bless her, she responded to him. She opened her mouth just a fraction, but it was enough. He let his hand move to the back of her head, interweaving with her hair and pulling it away from her, pushing it behind her shoulders.

She’d lifted her hands to grasp the arms of his shirt, and pulled back for a moment. 

Harry stopped immediately and made a move to take a step back, but her firm grip on his clothing held him close to her.

She looked up at him and he could tell by the slight indent in her lip that the inside was being nibbled inside her now closed mouth and he could feel panic starting to build inside him, maybe Ginny really was right, maybe she actually did know her shit and maybe he should have gone slower. But then she smiled at him and laughed, and Harry leaned forwards again, pulling her to him and wrapping one of his arms around her waist, holding her there, holding her still in the world, in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next Chapter Coming Soon, Homie (get ready)


End file.
